Waiting for counts...waiting for answers...waiting to get better

Today is 21 days of round three.  It's too early to start watching Jacob's counts every morning, hoping that his white blood cells are going to come back, but I just can't help it.  I know it will be at least another week before his body starts making the little ANC blood cells that will pull him out of this pit that he's in and allow him to go outside his tiny little room.  He's been confined in this room now for two whole weeks, but last month his counts stayed at zero for 21 days. They say that it takes a little longer with each round of chemo for them to recover because the bone marrow gets "tired". So, I'm trying so hard not to think about it and just concentrate on getting him through each day, keeping him occupied and comfortable and praying that he doesn't get sick. 

Right now, my biggest fear is for his eyes and the pressure that he has in his head.  They did an LP for him on Saturday and drained off some of his spinal fluid which helped his headaches for a day, but they came back on sunday.  The headaches are better again now, but his vision has not improved.  I was really hopeful that as the headaches got better, it would mean that the pressure in there is less and by relieving the pressure, his vision would improve. I'm so scared for his eyes and I hope that anyone reading this will please pray specifically for his eyes to recover from all of this and for his vision to be restored.

Dr. Barnette just left a few minutes ago after talking to me for a while about what he proposes that we do.  He decided to take Jacob off of the Septra medication because there is a slight chance that it is contributing to the intra-cranial pressure.  (It is one of the rare side affects of Septra) He is changing the medication to a new one called Peptamidine which essentially does the same thing as Septra.  The really cool thing about Peptamidine is that he will only have to take it once per month to have the same protection. These antibiotics protect Jacob from a specific type of pnumonia that he is very susceptible to because of his chemotherapy.  When his counts are low like they are now, he is susceptable to basically everything, but there are a few bugs that they know to be super common with this treatment so they treat for those bugs "Prophylactically" (haha...there's that big word again).  Jacob will be really glad to not have to take septra anymore because that pill is HUGE! It gets stuck in his throat every time he takes it, even when I cut it in half for him.