Walking

Well, believe it or not, we didn’t even make it a full 24 hours in the Pediatric Observation Unit before they moved us into the regular inpatient side of the hospital. Even more amazing is that Eli walked the entire way over here! It was no small walk for someone who had just been in surgery less than 24 hours earlier. Not only that, but he has subsequently taken 2 more walks of equal distance. All on Dr. LaQuaglia’s orders. He wants Eli walking around as much as possible to help stimulate his bowels to start moving again. Unfortunately they were still silent today (Dr. L stopped in twice to check on Eli) and his belly is still slightly distended, so Eli has to keep the NG tube in until tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day he can get rid of his NG tube AND his catheter. That will make walking even less of a chore. Between the oxygen tank, the IV pole, the catheter and the NG tube, we are quite the sight walking down the hallways of the hospital!

Eli has quite a bit of tummy pain, which is to be expected, so he gets morphine when that pain strikes. We try to keep that sparse since a side effect of morphine is to slow down the bowels! He is getting another non narcotic pain med 24/7 though. He also is very silent since he has the NG tube in. He would rather point, groan, and shake his head than actually utter words. This is exactly what he was like last October after his major surgery. Once the nose tube comes out, I expect the words to flow freely again. He is definitely in his withdrawn “warrior mode” where he doesn’t want to be messed with by the medical staff and he simply wants to relax and have books read to him. Even though he doesn’t like to walk, he does it and with very little complaining. This week Eli earned his “tough guy” haircut for sure.

I think Eli is going to once again miss Fourth of July fireworks. Last year, he was stuck doing chemo in Iowa City and missed out on the show he was really excited for. This year, we’re going to be inpatient and miss out on the Ronald McDonald House trip to the river to watch the fireworks in NYC. The poor guy just can’t catch a break. 🙂 Maybe we’ll be able to see something out of our window, you never know.

Thanks to everyone who has been leaving messages and sending encouraging emails to us and Eli. We are very fortunate to have so many people that we can count on to pray immediately when an unexpected turn of events arise. I might not get back to you all individually, but thank you all for your notes. Not everyone going through this has as good of a support group as we have, so we certainly don’t take it for granted. Thanks to everyone who has said they will be praying for a speedy recovery. I’m guessing we will be here through the weekend, but you never know how long it will take him to recover. As Dr. LaQuaglia says, “As long as it takes.”