Oliver has now been in this Hospital for 3 weeks today. How annoying right? His bed has become his space. He is getting used to the wake up times for vitals and labs that he is up already during those times. :(
We finally got his sodium level up after a huge restriction to his liquids. First they said 1200ml's, which is about what he was/had been drinking since his appetite soared (Side effect of the Decadron he takes twice daily). Then they said 800mls's, then down to 600ml's - which is HARD to do. This kid thinks food all the time and eats it and wants something to drink with it, right. We've had to hide any drinks (even our own) and ration it off after he keeps asking for a drink. Now he says "where is drink".
We end up calling his nurse on the room phone when he is ready for his meal of the day, so he's picked up on that, and when he pretends to talk on his foot like it is a phone, he says "Hello food", or instead of saying "food" he says the item "Hello Pizza Pie".
Pretty much 9 out of 10 words he says is a food item. Only 10 more days of the Decadron left. I heard the kids stop eating for a bit after the adjustment, which is fine since he has gained 1 kilo since we got here. He will have to take this nasty tasting steroid at other stages of his treatment, but not for this long (28 days in a row).
His food tastes keep changing as we went from total string cheese addiction (like 6 a day), to asking for salad dressing more often now. Even wanted to dip his macaroni and cheese into the ranch dressing?! Again though, all because of this steroid. He also gets manic about his food as well, wanting one thing, taking two bites and getting mad wanting another thing, but then going back to the first, repeat a few times.
He watches the movie 'Cars' at least once a day that he has begun to memorize parts (words, songs, etc etc). Its pretty cute.
Sooooooooo the question is, when do we get to go home?
Unfortunately that is still unknown. We thought for a day that his ANC was going up, but then went back down again the next 2 days. His Hemoglobin and Platelets are hanging steady and stable, however. But its his ANC that is keeping us here. They want his ANC to head back upward and above 500 and staying and rising before we can go home. His main Oncologist had said we should anticipate to stay here for the 28 days of this round of his chemo treatment called "induction" which ends on the 19th - but if his counts go up before then we could go home, but at his point we have just anticipated the entire stay. Its weird sleeping in 3 different places all the time (either at home, at my inlaws, or at the hospital) that sometimes I wake up confused of where I am.
The 19th is his bone marrow aspiration which will confirm if he is truly in remission which is what his blood smear showed last week. That would mean they killed this cancer pretty quickly. However, there is a long road ahead on keeping it that way.
I hope that they up his fluid allowance a bit tomorrow if his sodium stays normal. Then they will gradually let him have more and more while his body adjusts to the changes. He is currently staring me down saying "drink". Ugh.
