First Bump

Tuesday Jan 31st was a much better day! Woke up happy and started playing peek-a-boo on his own. His personality has come out so much in the past few days and we are so happy to see it. No chemo meds today and, you guessed it - pass home :)

Wednesday Sebastian slept overnight for seven hours strait! That hasn't happened since he was about 3 months old and I kept waking up to check on him, and watched his heart bumping along on the monitor.  If I was at home and he had slept that much I would have been beside myself when I woke up thinking the worst. I'm hoping he will transition to sleeping better while we are in the hospital and once we get home I will be more used to it.
I changed his dressing today with a little help from the nurse - I have done them before on adults a few years ago but it is much more difficult to change one on a wriggling little baby, and especially different on your own kid. He did really well with it and we were able to position it better too as the nurses were having trouble drawing blood from it - now it works like a charm.
We had a visit again from the music therapist - Bash is so in awe of the guitar and its really funny to watch him. He is starting to get more into it each time and they brought in some instruments (an ocean sound maker, tambourine, and maracas) for him to play with and join in - the maraca spent most of the time in his mouth haha!
We also talked to the doctors today about when his bone marrow aspirate will be as he needs one before the next treatment can start. They want his neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) count to be at least 750 before the next phase can begin. For the past week they have been bouncing around 0 to 300 due to the chemo treatment. There is no time frame on how long that takes, every child is different they tell us. It could be a few days or a few weeks. They assured us that waiting will not allow his cancer cells to come back or mutate, or get stronger, and the waiting will not change the course of the treatment in anyway. They do think that by Monday his numbers will be returning as he is still doing so great.

Today he woke up happy again - not from sleeping as he was back to his wake every three hours schedule, sigh. His hemoglobin came back low this morning so they plan to give him a blood transfusion and right before they start it he started getting really fussy and warm to touch. The thermometer says 38.3 - his first fever, and the one we have been expecting for the last few weeks. Our 'bump in the road'. It happened so quick and we weren't expecting that. I was really worried at first but the nurse handled it very well, all his other vital signs were stable. Blood cultures were taken and sent to the lab and we should know in 48 hours or less what if anything caused it. They started him on Piptaz (an antibiotic), and then give him Tylenol and start the blood transfusion. He has been very clingy all afternoon and only wants his mom. In some ways I am relieved that we have finally had the fever the doctors have all been waiting for but I was also so hoping to make it through with no fevers. As I write this he is finally fast asleep, having a much needed nap to get his strength back up. Nurses will monitor him overnight and we will keep him on Tylenol if he needs it. Looks like our possible discharge home for the weekend will have to be postponed.