Saturday, July 11, 2009

March 2009: From Jerry

During the month of March Nate continued to rest, sleep a lot and see his friends.  He still had to go in every single week to see his oncologist and be monitored.  This meant approximately 4 hours in the hospital including having 10 vials of blood taken, ex rays and a full examination.  His doctor happily reported that every week, his blood counts got better and better.
March 23, 2009 was the first day of the fourth quarter of the school year.  Back in July 2008 after Nate was diagnosed with leukemia, his oncologist told him if he was lucky he would make it to graduation in June, but not return to school for his senior year.  After his appointment with the Doctor on March 16th, she told him she saw no reason why he couldn't return to school for the last quarter.  (Of course, Nate had asked every single week for a month).  Although he had finished all his academic classes for graduation, the school was wonderful and he attended ASB, Leadership, Track, where he helped coach and was a Teaching Assistant one period and an Office Assistant another period.  It gave him a sense of normalacy and he was happy just to feel normal again going to school and hanging out with his friends. 
On March 31, 2009 Nate returned to the hospital to have his Hickman Catheter removed from his chest.  It had been part of him for 8 months and 1 week.  He made sure to ask them to give it to him after they removed it.  He said he wanted to keep it to remind him that through it was how he was kept alive. 

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