Happy Anniversary! Well, some would debate whether it is “happy” or not, but today marks one year from when we took Eli in to get a CT scan and was told that he had a tumor filling his abdomen and extending up into his chest and down into his pelvis. One year ago today, we were driving to Iowa City with our minds and hearts reeling. My first e-mail from a public computer terminal in Iowa City a year ago was short and sweet and started an ongoing prayer chain like we never imagined. Three days later I started this CarePage and it has been an amazing tool in keeping all of our friends/family/acquaintances up to date on what has been going on in our battle to beat Eli’s cancer.
So what are we “happy” about? We are thrilled that we have made so much progress in the last year. We are thrilled that we have such a great group of people supporting us. We are thrilled that God has used this last year for His glory and to introduce us to so many people we would have otherwise never met. You can also reread those last three sentences and replace the word “thrilled” with “thankful”. Thanks to everyone who has stood behind us and lifted us up in prayer. Most of all, thanks to God for giving us this trial. James 1:2-4.
Another landmark came on Monday when Eli got his first haircut since his diagnosis (if you don’t count us buzzing his hair off when it started to fall out from chemo). I’m sure you’ve already had a good laugh over the picture on the main page. Eli had been bald for so long, that once 3F8 started and he was starting to get his hair back, he never wanted to let it go. Any talk of a hair trim was met with forceful resistance. However, one of our nurses put the idea of a Mohawk into his head and THAT seemed to be a good idea. So we went to our good friends at Fiber Hair Spa and they hooked Eli up with a tough haircut. Personally, I think it reflects how tough he has been through all of his treatments. He has been getting LOTS of attention the last few days and he’s loving it. He must get that from Lacey, I was a shy boy that didn’t like any attention at all. I hope not many of you fell for that last line.
Tuesday night brought a trip to Urgent Care believe it or not. Eli was having stomach trouble every night for the last few nights, but Tuesday night was pretty bad. He was crying for about 3 hours and when I finally asked him around 2am if he wanted to go to the hospital, he said yes. The doctor took an abdominal x-ray and discovered that he had a lot of stool in his intestines and theorized that his diahrreah was actually moving around the “stuck” stool and that is why we didn’t think he was constipated. We got back to the Ronald at 6am with a prescription for some medicine to “get things moving”. Hopefully that will resolve in the next day or two.
Next Monday is Eli’s surgery to install a temporary central line so we can do the stem cell harvest. All next week will be the harvest (3-4 hours per day until we have enough stem cells). His GCSF shots should start tomorrow and will have to be ongoing through his stem cell harvest to ensure we have lots of cells to bag.
I hope everyone has a great weekend. Thanks, as always, for checking in!
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