The Vampire at the National Cancer Institute

Max was biten by a vampire yesterday, at least that’s his story.  He was punctured in his jugular and all his blood was sucked out.  We are in Maryland this week to enter Max into a clinical trial at the National Cancer Institute.  The trial doesn’t actually start until Max has completed approx 8mo of chemo and has no evidence of disease.  The researchers will attempt to make a custom vaccine that will  train Max’s t-cells to fight his cancer cells from the tissue that was resected 2weeks ago. 

Max had a tube surgically implanted into his jugular and then via aphaeresis his blood siphoned through a centrifuge to extract his T-cells.  It’s quite disturbing to watch all his blood leaving his body and rolling around a big machine before being put back in.  The puncture site was pretty painful for Max to deal with and the entire procedure took 15hrs.  Another brutal day for the Kleck family that we are glad to have behind us.    

Max had a great 4^th of July.  It was hard to believe that only 11 days after surgery into his skull he was at the beach boogie boarding like a kamikaze, then at La Costa for  kid jumpy’s followed by firworks with all his buddies.  What an amazing kid.  This weekend we will be taking Max to Rehoboth beach with Dan and Syd to try out the east coast beaches.  Next week more surgery, scans, and chemo starts.