Fourth Vincristine injection, and red blood cell count improving

Jazz weighed 23.7kg today.

His lymph nodes are still down, so unless anything changes next week, this should be the last of his weekly Vincristine injections - we should be able to reduce them to once every 3 weeks from now on. Also, at the end of this week we can reduce the Prednisolone to every other day - although that may have a negative effect on the cystitis, so we'll have to see how it goes.

We've noticed that there's a daily pattern to how his cystitis has been affecting him for about the last week: through the night and during the morning, he seems in control of his bladder and can tell us when he needs to go out. Then during the afternoon and evening until about 9 or 10pm, he seems to have less control, and often leaks - sometimes without even seeming to be aware of it. Fiona admits to being baffled as to why this should be the case. It seems a bit similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, except that in IBS, the bowel gets a rest overnight, which why it's more under control in the morning. In Jazz's case, he's up all night, so there's no rest period to explain why he's better in the morning.

Meanwhile, his red cell count is coming back up, which means either he's not losing as much blood in his urine now, or he's well enough to be producing enough new ones to replace them. Either way, it should be a sign that things are starting to improve. Fingers crossed!