3F8

I think that it’s safe to say that when we were home, we missed our friends in NYC. We missed the fun activities and we missed the good food. We did NOT miss the 3F8. Mondays are usually the worst and today was no exception. These are the days I feel bad for the people sharing a room with us at the clinic because typically Eli deals with his pain by screaming at the top of his lungs over and over again. Many times he finds a “singsong” rhythm that he repeats. Sometimes they are funny and we find ourselves laughing at his coping mechanisms. I think Dr. Kushner was surprised to see us smiling when he walked in because he was looking a bit concerned when he heard Eli down the hallway. We assured him that it’s Eli’s way of dealing with it and that it would get better as the days go on. One day down, nine to go.

For the first time since we’ve been doing 3F8, we have been assigned the afternoon slot. We had a nice routine with the morning slot, so we’re trying to figure out how to get Eli to eat well since he can’t eat in the morning with his beta glucan and he is typically not recovered from 3F8 by dinner since he doesn’t get out of clinic until around 5pm now. Needless to say, morning 3F8 is much better than afternoon 3F8, but we play with the cards we are dealt. Tomorrow we actually have to go in first thing in the morning to get bloodwork done before Eli does his beta glucan. He had some counts come back a bit high today that deals with liver function, so they want to redo that test tomorrow before continuing the beta glucan. It wasn’t alarmingly high, but the normal range tops out at 1 and his score this afternoon was 1.2. We pray that he will be under 1 tomorrow and we can resume the beta glucan and 3F8 to finish out this round!

So to back up a few days, we did have a good trip to NYC and made it safe and sound. It wasn’t without its drama of course. Our idle tensioner started going out on the Focus Thursday night. Basically whenever we would slow down, it would start squealing like crazy. It got to be a bit embarrassing. Saturday morning I took it to Monro Muffler and Brake and the guy got us fixed in 3 hours, just in time to get to Hersheypark for the day! So even with a $380 repair bill, a $170 axle replacement before we left, and a $200/month parking bill, driving our own car up here was still cheaper than renting a one way rental. 🙂

Chocolate World and Hersheypark were a lot of fun. Eli could actually ride a LOT of rides there. With the purchase of Saturday tickets, they let us “preview” the park on Friday night from 7:30pm-10pm, which was a great deal because that is where we realized their rental strollers were terrible, so we went to WalMart to get some cheap ones. On Saturday, we were watching a guy throw baseballs at milk jugs to try to win a monster sized dog and he got one in. He graciously gave it to Eli before he even knew he was a cancer kid. I thought we got a lot of stares when Eli was bald. That was nothing compared to the looks we got as we hauled around a dog the size of a baby elephant around the park. 🙂 I know you all expect an Animoto video, so of course I won’t disappoint.

So prayers that Eli’s liver function will be normal would be really appreciated. Also, that the pain would be less intense for him over the next two weeks. Despite our occasional laughter over the way he copes with the pain, it really is very hard to watch him hurting so much.

Oh, and we brought a lot of bracelets here, so if you want to send a self addressed stamped envelope (with # of bracelets AND SIZES requested), send it to us here at the Ronald:

Eli Horn – Room 901
Ronald McDonald House
405 E 73rd St
New York, NY 10021