February 1, 1008

Chet's first appointment at St. Jude was on the first of February. When we arrived on the evening of the 31st, we had to go to the hospital to check in. Chet was running a slight fever, and not feeling very well. After they checked him out, we got settled in the hotel.

The next morning we met Chet's doctors, and they did their initial examination and reviewed his case history with us. After counts, we found out that his platelets had dropped to 22,000, which was the lowest they had been in over 8 years. When the doctor told us that, our hearts just stopped a bit. His immune system was really low, so the doctor told us to keep him home from school until his next appointment to give it a chance to recover. Then they told us that they wanted to bring him back the following week to have a bone marrow biopsy (which we expected) but they also wanted to run some tests to see if he had developed another disease. They told us that they wanted to check for leukemia, MSD, and Fanconi Anemia. We knew it probably wasn't the Fanconi since he had previously been tested for that, and we knew there was a chance that aplastic patients can develop MSD, and we knew there was a chance for leukemia, but it is still a terrifying feeling when doctors run off a list of tests for diseases that they want to exclude.

Here are some pictures from that first trip.

Chet and the St. Jude statue. I hate that he has to start a new treatment regime, but I am so grateful, beyond words, that he can go to St. Jude for treatment. They are every wonderful thing you have ever heard about them.

Here he is playing a puzzle game at the Cracker Barrel. We stopped there to eat on the way to enjoy some time together and to let him play with the checkers they have there. You can tell by the look on his face that he wasn't feeling great, but that didn't stop him from trying to beat that game over and over!

He and I decided to play with taking some pictures together in the hotel room. Chet loves the hotel rooms. He loves sleeping in the beds, being able to play in the arcade they have for the kids, and he adores having an unlimited supply of Mountain Dew.

I took a shot of the Welcome to Tennessee sign. It hangs right over the bridge that crosses the Mississippi River, and he really enjoyed seeing the river itself. The next time we go down he wants to go ride the steamboat on the Mississippi.