Check up, Audiology, and the zoo

Yesterday was a busy day for us.  Shad had an appointment at the clinic to check his counts at 8:45.  We got there, got a label for the 12 hour urine collection we had done, and hurried that up to the lab.  We got that done, and then went back to the clinic where we did his vitals, and then went in Jo's room and he got accessed.  He is getting so brave, and didn't even cry at all during the poke.  She took his blood, and sent that up to check his counts.  We went back out to the waiting room, and the doctor was with us shortly.  He checked Shad over, and we went over the plan for admission today.  He wanted us there by 9:00 tonight which was fine because we still got to go trick or treating.  He said we could go ahead and get him deaccessed, and if anything came up in the lab work that would change things he would give me a call.  We went back in to see Jo, and she took the needle out.  As we were walking out the lab results came.  The corpsman handed them to Jo, she took one look, and said to wait there she would be right back.  She went into the doctors' area and came right back out.  Apparently his platelets were low, he had been at 70 something on Friday, and now he was at 26.  Everything else was still good.  We had to reaccess Shad so they could get a little bit of blood for a type and cross.  We were told we wouldn't be starting chemo as planned, and to come back on Friday morning to check his platelet levels.  They would have platelets ready in case he needed them.
After that we had about half an hour until his audiology appointment, so we headed down to McDonalds to get some breakfast.  Shad wanted "a shaushage sandwich like grandpa gets" and an apple juice.  We got our food and sat down to eat.  As soon as we were done we headed up to audiology.  Ms. Nicole was happy to see Shad, and we were taken right in.  They tested his eardrums, and then he did the beep tests.  He is supposed to raise his hand every time he hears a beep.  At first he had these big headphones on.  After a little bit the audiologist came in and said she wanted to try it with piece that goes in his ear.  His left ear wasn't doing so well, but she thought it might be because his ear was getting squished.  She changed it over and ran the test again.  Luckily she was right, and everything was fine.  He has gone down a tiny bit in the highest range in the left ear, but she said it is not something to be concerned about yet.  I took some videos because I thought he was so cute, he was focusing so hard.  The first is him repeating words that she said to him, the second is him raising his hand.  The room we were in was pretty small, so it was hard to get far enough away to see him really well.

After we finished up at the audiologist we headed over to the zoo where we met up with Abigail, Kate and Mandy.   We walked around a lot and saw some bears, monkeys, orangutans, elephants, camels, a jaguar, and some other things.  Some of the highlights included climbing on all the statues, in the koala tree, and riding Skyfari.