I guess I don’t have too much to report tonight except that there are now more Iowans in Manhattan since Team Larson (cpn: ColemanScott) arrived last night at the Ronald McDonald House! Who hoo! They arrived just in time to get checked in and enjoy a BBQ on the 3rd floor terrace with us. We spent the rest of the night hanging out in the playroom. Today we all walked over the hospital together since we needed to get some bloodwork done so they could reorder Eli’s TPN and Coleman had to meet some docs. Tonight we had a fun night with carnival games. I got a kick out of the different strategies from the boys. Eli got 5 tickets and immediately spent it on a pen and called it good enough. Coleman and Caden set their sights on the biggest prize on the table and worked together to accumulate 50 tickets. Once Eli saw the value in saving his tickets, he went back for some more before his stomach started hurting again. The Larsons were kind enough to bring Eli a Cyclone hat and a Cyclone shirt, but after only 2 days, I think the twins are being a bad influence on Eli. I actually heard him say he liked their black and yellow Hawkeye crocs and then he told me that his favorite colors were black and yellow. The real heartbreaker was when I heard him lean forward and tell Peggy that he liked the Hawkeyes. 🙂
We are still going through several bouts of throwing up each day. I am really attributing it to the TPN, but I could be wrong. There might be something else going on that is causing it. Tonight we are actually not giving Eli the TPN because several of his labs came back really high (Magnesium, Potassium, and Phosphorus). We still requested hydration since he gets pretty dehydrated without it. We also requested a VMA test (urine test) because we haven’t done any scans for quite a while and have no idea if there is active cancer activity that has sprouted up since we were inpatient for a month. We won’t have scans again until after our next round of 3F8 in September. VMA numbers are usually a good indicator of whether something is wrong or not. We didn’t get any grief for asking for a VMA test. Today a nurse practitioner told us that understands those “worried parents” requests for tests. 🙂
We have been assured that we have a spot in the OR on Thursday at 11:40am for Eli’s dental work, so we’ll head in tomorrow to get a pre-admission screening visit out of the way (basically they look at him, weigh him, take blood, and say he’s good for surgery). We’re glad to be finally getting his poor teeth issues addressed!
After our quick bloodwork visit this morning, we joined up with the Ronald McDonald Camp volunteers and jumped in a police bus heading to the Brooklyn Bridge. The driver dropped us off at the beginning of the bridge and we walked across the entire thing (1.2 miles). On the other side, we got some free ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. The bus was there waiting for us, so we got to ride back to the Ronald after our ice cream. It was a really fun trip and something I’ve been wanting to do since the weather got nice. I’ve had a nice black and white shot of the Brooklyn Bridge as my Desktop photo for several months and it’s nice to be able to look at it now and say I’ve walked it. Click the album cover below to see some photos from the walk:
We also got to meet the Westminster dog show winner from last year (James) as well as see this year’s winner (Uno) again. That’s always fun, although the kids never care about how famous the dogs are. They are just as excited when a local lady brings in a rescue dog that loves kids. The famous dogs tend to bring the paparazzi with them, which can be fun too.
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