I think we have seen a side effect of this round of chemo. Extreme boredom. 🙂 Eli is feeling just as good as he has been for the weeks that we were at home, with no problems at all. The only problem is coming up with enough things he likes to do and eat. One fun activity for him has been riding a three wheeled bike around the hallways. He’s getting pretty good at it, although a few people around here might testify that he could use some lessons in driving a straight line. We had another roommate Thursday through Friday, but then we had the room to ourselves Friday night on, which was really nice because we don’t have to worry about waking up or bothering another (possibly more sick) kiddo.
Herky the Hawkeye came by to do a promo video with some kids on our floor for Dance Marathon yesterday. They are going to play it during halftime of one of their games. Anyway, we signed the consent form saying they could show Eli on the video if they got a good shot, but I don’t think there was any good tape of Eli because he refused to go in the room where Herk was. He was happy to watch him through the window. Later on, when Herk was gone, we went to the playroom to use the blow pens. After a few minutes, Herk came back and Eli couldn’t really get away, but Herk kept his distance at Eli’s request. You know, the mascot might not be so intimidating to kids if it wasn’t 7’ 6” tall. They must have a basketball player in there or something, he’s HUGE. Anyway, he saw my Cyclone hat and wasn’t too thrilled, but was very happy to see Eli’s Herk tattoo. I caught one sad moment on video when I asked Eli if he liked the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones better and he said “the Hawkeyes”. I will argue that he was intimidated by a huge, scary mascot, so he had no other choice but to say the Hawkeyes. 🙂 More pics (and the video) can be found at http://photos.hornit.net.

We had high hopes that we would actually get to come home tonight! His last day of chemo was today and it started at 9:30am. It is 2 hours, but then there is 12 hours of hydration afterwards. We thought, hey, we’ll be done by 11:30pm so we can just go home and actually sleep in our own beds (after several nights in the hospital chairs, this was a VERY appealing thought). Our nurses thought that was a good idea, but apparently the higher ups didn’t think so. They wanted to keep him on hydration overnight and release him in the morning. The kid drinks like a fish, I hardly think hydration is a problem, but I’m not going to go AMA (against medical advice) on them. At least we’ll get to head home tomorrow.
We did talk to both of the main surgeons here about Eli’s surgery. They obviously seem very competent and even agreed to both do the surgery together if we’d like (meaning two senior surgeons would be working together during the surgery). However, they both emphasized that if we felt more comfortable with the Neuroblastoma surgeon in New York, they would not be offended and would welcome us back to this hospital for the rest of our treatment with open arms and no hard feelings. We appreciated that. We haven’t made a final decision yet on the surgery, but we’ll let you know when we do.
We talked to them more about getting the stem cells tested and harvested before Round 4. They decided to have us come back this upcoming Friday (the 31st) to have them test the bone marrow to see if this latest round of chemo knocked the neuroblastoma out of the bone marrow so we can harvest it in the beginning of September. We’d REALLY love to be neuroblastoma free after this round. That was a prayer request hint in case you missed it. There are now 320 of you checking this CarePage (which blows us away), so that’s a LOT of prayer and we appreciate every single one.