Yes it's rotten. He's an only child I believe and his mother survived breast cancer a couple of years ago. Still, treatment odds aren't terrible - about a 50% 5 year survival and that's not counting on newer second line treatments like CAR-T therapies which can be quite miraculous, so I'm hoping for the best with him. He presented to the ER with nausea and chest pain and they found his white blood cell count was 50,000! (Normal 3,000- 10,000). They gave him his first dose of chemo the next day and two days later his white count was low at 1400, so at least it is very sensitive to Rituxan. Problem is, he's in Hawaii and would like to travel back to California so his mom could care for him but he shouldn't travel when he's immunocompromised with a low white blood count (breathing everybody's germs on the airplane) and he would have to time things carefully between treatments so there is no lag time between his last treatment there and first treatment here.
