I always feel bad when I can see that people have been checking the site daily only to find that there aren’t any new posts. I guess a lot of people enjoy reading the message board posts as much as we do. If you noticed, CarePages started posting on the main page of Eli’s CarePage how many people visit and how many messages have been posted. Mark from Cornerstone wins the honor of being the big number 600th person to sign up for Eli’s CarePage, which doesn’t even come close to representing the number of people lifting Eli up in prayer thanks to the number of prayer lists he has been put on. If you would have asked Eli how many friends he had, he’d probably say 3 or 4. He’d be off by several hundred. 🙂
There’s really nothing new to report except that Eli is starting to feel better and acting more like himself (which means talking a lot more). That’s how the nurses gauge how he’s doing. If they have a hard time leaving because he is asking all sorts of questions, that’s a good sign. We were able to drag him out of bed and have him walk to the bath, but not without plenty of complaints. We threw a big shirt on him so he would be covered on the way to the bath and back and the nurses were disgusted at our continued support for the Big XII.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/BackInIowaCity/photo#5132792248048801922 From Back in Iowa …
Hey, it was a gift from Uncle DoDo and Aunt JoJo from Jeff City, MO. We all know he bleeds Cardinal and Gold. Please don’t be offended, Bret. 🙂 Anybody catch the Cyclone game last weekend? Watch out Jayhawks! One Doctor was teasing Eli that his “Cyclone Fans Live Here” sign said “Cyclone Fans Leave Here.” Eli has been exceptionally sweet and cuddly at nights, which means I typically end up falling asleep in his little pediatric hospital bed with him and wake up an hour later as I fall out of the bed with cramps in places I didn’t know could cramp.
He is still on the NG tube because of his sore throat and worry that he’ll throw up meds if he has to take them orally. He also still has blood in his urine and it really hurts when he goes, but the Urologists say to just hang tight because the next step is a catheter, so as long as he can still go on his own, we should just go with the flow (pun intended I’m sorry to say.) We haven’t been on isolation since they looked up CMV in “the red book” and discovered that there was no need for isolation for that. Hopefully those antibiotics will be done in the next 2 days or so. Also, he had a GFR test (measures kidney function) since there hadn’t been one since before his surgery. It came back off the charts (in a good way), so that was a relief.
We still have no decision on New York versus Iowa City. We’re getting closer and have a few remaining questions to ask. There are obviously pros and **** to both, so we’ll eventually just need to go with what we feel the most comfortable with and be at peace with that decision and try not to look back. It won’t be easy, but it’s by far the best way to keep moving forward.
As always, thanks for your messages of support and encouragement whether it be via e-mail, cards, message board posts, or voicemails.