July 1, 2007

Nothing major to post about today, but wanted to let people know what is coming up next. Saturday was a day of visitors (some of them even daring to wear Iowa State Cyclone gear in Iowa Hawkeye territory! Ok, myself included.) 🙂 Lots of people stopped by to give Eli their love and it really did a nice job of keeping him awake most of the day. That allowed him to break out of this “sleep during the day and be awake all night” cycle. So last night was really good, minus the IV setting off alarms every 30 minutes or so with air in the lines. I posted a few new pictures of Eli reading with our friend Matt and playing with one of his new toys.
Today is a day of rest (as it well should be) and preparation for this upcoming week. We’ve been battling with high blood pressure and his first fever since arriving in Iowa City. The doctors are actually a bit surprised it’s taken this long for him to get a fever. They are doing a blood culture to make sure he doesn’t have an infection. Sometimes those Central Lines (the semi-permanent IVs coming out of his chest) can get infected. Mostly just treated with antibiotics, which they’ve started already to be safe. The high blood pressure is also being controlled with meds.
Tomorrow Eli has a GFR test on his kidneys. This is a really critical test and we can’t start chemotherapy until it is done. It is a test to see how well his kidneys are functioning. If they are working 100%, then we can give him the maximum chemotherapy treatment, which is preferred. If his kidneys aren’t at 100%, we’ll have to scale it back accordingly. Please pray for fully functioning and healthy kidneys! Once those test results come back, we start chemotherapy.
We know that after another week or so here in the hospital, we’ll be able to go home. We’ll be home for 3-4 weeks, then we’ll have to come back to Iowa City for 5-6 days for chemo treatments. We’ll be doing that cycle several times until the neuroblastoma tumor is small enough they think they can surgically remove it all. No idea how long that will take.
Thanks to everyone for letting us know that you’re praying for us, we really appreciate it. It is absolutely critical in Eli’s recovery.
James 5:16 – Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power.

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