Well, the weekend is over. Saturday we tried our hardest to get out of the hospital for a few hours to go to a trick or treat event at bloomingdale’s that Barbara from the Candlelighters organized, but in the 11th hour, we got shot down. Eli was doing well, but he had JUST been allowed to start drinking (no eating). The biggest concern was that he was on TPN (nutrition via IV) for several days and they worried that if they just cut Eli off of that for a few hours that his blood sugar would crash. Normally that could be fixed by having him drink a bunch of juice or something, but his stomach wasn’t used to really drinking a lot yet either, so while most of the Drs. were leaning towards letting him go, the final decision came down to a “No” from the surgery team. I respected that opinion, even though it was hard to get your hopes up of leaving and then not get to go.
“HOWEVER” (I have seen Mike Meyers in The Cat in The Hat literally hundreds of times now, so if you’ve seen that movie, you can imagine how he says that at the end of the movie and that’s how I’m saying it right now in my head), today was a new day! They had moved Eli up to “soft foods” this morning in addition to the drinking. What a relief. I think most of my day Saturday was spent explaining to him why he couldn’t eat! At least this allowed him to eat pear halves, a cheese omelet, a pancake, some grapes, and some hard boiled eggs!
So, since there was another party going on (you guessed it, organized by Barbara from Candlelighters), they gave us a 2 hour pass to leave the hospital! It was a Halloween meal at a GREAT Mexican restaurant on East 86th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue called Maz Mezcal. The lady who owns it is amazing and really great to families who have kids with cancer. All of the staff was in costume and the whole place was decorated to the extreme. Eli was very excited to wear his Spiderman costume. We ended up walking since it was going to be the fastest way to get there, and everyone seemed to get a kick out of his outfit. He counted 12 taxis on our 18 block walk (in reality, he counted for about 30 seconds) and just couldn’t believe how many taxis there were in NYC. 🙂 Here is a picture of Eli checking out the waiters. He wasn’t so sure about them…
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/NewYorkCity/photo#5126635610787287442 There were a LOT of families there from the Ronald McDonald House and everyone was having a great time. After we ordered our food, I could tell Eli wasn’t looking the greatest so I asked him if he was ok (for about the one hundredth time) and he said his tummy hurt. That was enough for me, we packed up and took off for the hospital, but not until after Barbara made sure we got a goodie bag that was so full of little toys it later took Eli 20 minutes to unpack it all. As we were waiting for the goodie bag, we met a police officer by the name of Sean waiting outside the restaurant. He asked where we were headed and offered to give us a ride in his police van. How could we pass that up? This is a picture of Eli and I standing in front of our transport vehicle outside of the hospital. And in case you’re wondering, yes, we did get to hear the siren. 🙂
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/NewYorkCity/photo#5126635610787287474 Click Next for more…