This will be a quick one, just to let you know what is going on since most of you knew we were heading back to Iowa City this week. Tuesday we left home at 6:15am for our appointment. Eli was in good spirits and had the doctors laughing because he was being his normal inquisitive and humorous self. Some of the doctors hadn’t even heard him speak before because he really wasn’t himself the first time we were there.
They injected him with some radioactive material, then had us come back in an hour for the bone scan. The bone scan consists of Eli holding very still for 3 minutes while they “take a picture” of his bones. He went through 6 of those and did a great job of holding still. Then they injected him with more radioactive material so he’d be ready for his MIBG scan on Thursday (today).
This morning we left at 5:30am and then found out that the anesthesia doctors weren’t going to be ready until 9am, so we sat around for about an hour and a half waiting for show time. Since Eli had several scans to do today, they put him completely out. He had 3 MIBG pictures to have taken that take 20 minutes each. Then he needed a CT scan. Finally, they were going to extract some bone marrow to test it for Neuroblastoma (two big needles in the back to extract marrow from the bone, so we were glad he was out for it).
Eli went under around 9:30am and we got to see him again about 1:30pm. Putting him to sleep was really quite amazing. They injected the medicine into his central line. The guy said he was giving him 3 ccs to start and that it would take a few minutes. Quite literally within 30 seconds, Eli was staring ahead and then put his hands up to his cheeks and his head started to roll back. He started babbling about “three of something”. I figured out later he was saying “Why 3?” because the doctor had said he was putting in 3 ccs. I don’t know if it was appropriate or not, but I was holding him trying to keep his head steady and dying laughing because his babbling was so hilarious. When he woke up, it was a different story. We were told he woke up and yelled “I want my mom and I want my dad!” He was pretty grouchy until he was sure we were leaving. The nurses said it’s a very common side effect of the anesthesia.
The bummer part was that as we were getting ready to leave, they informed us they wanted us back tomorrow for a “72hr” MIBG scan (72 hrs means 72 hours after he was injected. Today was a 48 hr MIGB Scan)! Ugh. It turns out, they want to compare apples to apples with the last MIBG scan. You might recall sedation was a nightmare last time, so he didn’t get his MIBG scan done until 3 days after his radiation injection, not 2 days. So they want a 3 day MIBG scan to compare with his first one. We debated staying in Iowa City for the rest of the afternoon and just spending the night at the Ronald McDonald house, but our appointment for tomorrow wasn’t until noon, so we decided it would be nice to spend the evening and night in our own house. We went ahead and came home.
We’ll be heading back tomorrow for another out patient scan (definitely putting in more time on the road than actually in the hospital, but that’s ok). We don’t know when we’ll get the results, but hopefully soon. If all goes according to plan, we start Round 3 of chemo on August 22nd and it’s another 5 day one. We haven’t done the kind of chemo medicine they have scheduled for Round 3 yet, so we’re not sure how he’ll react.
Thanks for the prayers. Sorry this is so short and to the point, but that’s all I had time for tonight!