T time

For something that could both save your life and kill you, it doesn't look like much.

One tiny syringe, full of specialized T-cells. Actually, though it's a full 10 ml syringe there's only 5 ml of the cells in there. There was so little they added another blood product just to fill it up.

Even then, it took all of five minutes to do the infusion we hope will cause graft versus host disease and by side effect destroy the cancer that came back so readily after last year's chemotherapy and this year's bone marrow transplant.

This is the end of the first attempt. It included two waves of chemotherapy, then this, and now we wait to see if GVHD shows up. If it doesn't, we try again, with the next batch of T-cells being bigger each time until we get what we want.

It's the unknown that is the worst right now. We do a lot of waiting in a situation where we just want to do something, anything that could make him better.

He's OK with it. During the T-cell infusion he played with tissues, ripping them up and wearing them on his head like a hat. His weight is up thanks to all of the NG tube feeds, which even took a night off last week when the pump stopped working. He's also started to regain a bit of appetite, though that will fall off after the chemo he had last week as well.

Such a happy kid. He doesn't know any better, so this is just fine.