MDA nurses need to double team Luke!

It's Wednesday evening. Luke is back from MDA after a long day. He received both red cells and platelets in addition to scheduled chemo. Chemo wise he received vincristine and Erwina L-Asparaginase (ELA). Vincristine was done IV. ELA was a different story.

Monday's posting had a brief expose on ELA. ELA is stable for only four hours so it's ordered. mixed and injected without any delay. We knew ELA would be an injection into the muscle, but what we did not know was each dose would consist of two injections.

To minimize discomfort the MDA nurses doubled teamed Luke and delivered two injections simultaneously, one in each thigh. The administrative process was nurse Sande and Anna came into Luke's room, smiled, Sande said on the count of three, Anna counted to three and Sande put a two inch needle in the Luke's left thigh and at the same time Anna put a two inch needle in Luke's right thigh. Luke had no time to say anything and Sande and Anna placed themselves sufficiently away from his flailing arms that they were out of harms way. In the end Anna was deemed to have provided the kinder, gentler experience but to Luke it probably did not matter. Not that Luke cared, but I wish I had had the camera ready as it was a bit of a surreal experience seeing the synchronized administration of injections. That said there will be other photo opportunities as ELA is repeated five more times.

So far no allergic reaction to the ELA. We are hoping no antibodies build up causing an allergic reaction in round two on Friday.

Picture of the week is Luke and Dr Yuen. Dr. Yuen has been with Luke from day one at MDA. She is a great individual with an ever present smile. By the way I have told Dr. Yuen if she loses interest in the practice of medicine she may have an opportunity to star as Edna in the movie sequel to "The Incredibles". What do you think?

Luke has gotten back to his model building. He spends a lot of time on each and per the attached pictures, the results are pretty impressive.

At the end of May if Luke can be convinced and feels up to appearing in concert Mom, Dad, Jeff and Michael have committed to attend. Hoping there are others.

Blood drive and fund raising plans are going great. Hope to have a few surprises to announce soon. Keep May 30th free!