Well, the major quest ended yesterday and it appears that Eli’s digestive system is operating rather normally. He has a better appetite and the only time we have a threat of throwing up is when he has to take oral medication. However, he still prefers that over the nose tube. Here are the other highlights:
* They are cutting back on his nourishments through the IV and letting him depend more on eating and drinking like he should be.
* The other good news is that the blood pressure has been so good lately that they have decided to cut back on one of his blood pressure medications.
* This morning they took away his morphine drip to try to wean him off of the pain medication.
* Eli is officially no longer neutropenic! His white blood cell counts are above the danger zone, so visitors no longer have to wear masks (sorry to our visitors yesterday who still had to wear them) as long as they haven’t been sick recently.
That’s about it. We are gearing up for Round Two of chemo. I was wrong in the last post when I said it was 5 days long. Rounds One and Three are 5 days long, but Round Two is only 3 days long as it is different medication with a new set of side effects. They switch things up so the neuroblastoma cells don’t get “accustomed” to the medicine and build up immunity to it. So Round Two starts Tuesday, 7/24 and they are HOPING that we can go home that weekend (28th/29th) barring no further side effect complications. If that is the case, we’ll be home until our Round Three starts, which is tentatively set for August 14th assuming his white blood cell counts are good. They will also do some bone and MIBG scans August 7th through the 9th, but those are outpatient visits. Rather than drive 2.5 hrs each day for them, we might just stay in the Ronald McDonald house each night. We’ve had plenty of people ask us if we are ever going to leave this place (mostly the housekeeping and other staff) and our answer is, “The first chance we get!” I feel like clacking my new bright green Crocs together and saying “There’s no place like home…”
I also launched something late last night that I thought would be fun. We hear from so many people in so many different places that they are praying for Eli. I thought it would be cool to have a visual representation of that, so I created a map that you can add a pushpin to with your city and state. I went ahead and added everyone that sent Eli a card in the mail. Otherwise, if you are reading this update, take a second and add yourself to the map! It’s located on my tech blog at http://techblog.hornit.net and it has instructions there on how to add yourself to the map. So far it is the latest post titled “Personally Using Technology”. I took extra precautions to find a way to do it where you don’t have to “sign up” for some account, so you should be able to just Click the Add button and add your name, city, state and whatever contact information you WANT to provide. Nothing is required except location!
Also, thanks to our friends who brought up my digital camera (along with 20 pounds of mail – mostly cards for Eli) I have been posting better quality pictures. The best ones I try to post here on the CarePage, but don’t forget you can check out our family photo album at http://photos.hornit.net and click on Hospital Stay. Those have the same videos on them that I put on YouTube as well. Thanks for all of your faithful prayers. We continue to cling on to them!