GO CYCLONES! I can’t explain the feeling here. Oh the razzing we got all day Friday from countless nurses and doctors! In fact, I made a bet with one of the nurse practitioners. If the Cyclones won, she had to wear a Cy tattoo on Monday and if the Hawks won, I had to win a Hawkeye tattoo. She was utterly convinced that there was no way she’d be wearing a Cy tattoo on Monday. I think it might actually physically hurt her to wear it. I can’t wait! 🙂
Eli asked me last night, “Dad, when will the good guys actually win?” Well guess what, they won the most important game the entire season! Eli of course wore his number 7 jersey, but was bored with watching football on the TV, so he watched all of 10 minutes of the game. Then he slept or played in the play room the rest of the time. I’m glad most of the people on this side of the floor are gone, I didn’t feel so bad yelling at the TV. Since Eli’s grandparents were here, Lacey and I decided to take a walk on the University of Iowa campus after the game. What a beautiful day to wear cardinal and gold!
Ok, so for the real reason we’re here. Round 4 of chemo started at about 6pm last night. We’ll do 3 days of Etoposide and 5 days of Cisplatin. So far, no major problems. He has definitely lost some of his appetite and seems to be a bit more grumpy than usual, but otherwise definitely not throwing up or suffering from backed up bowels yet. We’re thankful for that. It appears that my birthday present (Sep. 26) is going to be a return visit to Iowa City for a CT Scan and a repeat bone marrow test.
We did do 2 tests yesterday. The first was a hearing test. He actually showed some loss in the upper registers, which is expected. More than likely, he will lose some more after this round of Cisplatin since it’s known to be hard on the hearing. The second test was a GFR test which tests his kidney functions. He actually tested better than last time (which was normal), so that was good news because Cisplatin is also hard on the kidneys.
We need LOTS of prayer that this Cisplatin will knock out the rest of the neuroblastoma in the bone marrow because it’s really important we have clean stem cells to rescue, and enough of them.
We had to share a room with a newborn last night, but I felt more sorry for them than us. Eli was his typical loud self and actually set off her heart monitor once because he yelled and it scared her! Thankfully they were just here for the night and took off this afternoon. This room is much more “dual occupancy friendly”. The curtain basically divides the room in half perfectly. The sleeping comforts seem to decline every visit, however. I expect by Round 5 I’ll be sleeping on the floor. 🙂 It seems to be rather quiet this weekend, so we might get by with another night or two with the room to ourselves, which would be nice.
Thanks for the prayers about New York. We have decided to do the surgery in New York IF they can get us scheduled on a good date. Good would be sometime in the first 2 weeks of October. If they are going to really delay us, we will probably proceed with the surgery in Iowa City. New York promised to call us next week to let us know when they could get us in. We’re praying for an early date. That’s it for now. Thanks for checking in on us!