It's all (relatively) better

Another Friday, another trip to Children's, another dose of Vincristine. Daniel acted like he didn't feel great this morning, leaned over in his carseat all the way there and whimpered. We went the entire night last night without a browning of the bedsheets, but he slept restlessly. He nursed obsessively all night, and at 2 am, sat up and began repeating, "Up! Up! Pease? Up!" So i got up and carried him down the hall, following the pointing finger to the kitched, to the fridge, to the egg carton, to the stove. So I scrambled two eggs, which he shoved in his mouth in an alarmingly short amount of time, and asked for more. I dug out some leftover mashed potatoes and tried to fool him by mixing his third egg into a big pile of potatoes, but no such luck. Kid can't be fooled. So. I tried to make it more palatable by putting some ketchup on it. Big mistake. Then we just decided we wanted ketchup. We wanted ketchup on our ketchup. We wanted to dip our ketchup in ketchup. We wanted to eat ketchup with a spoon. Shutting down the ketchup obsession took some doing and a meltdown, which woke Alex, which led to an hour of nursing them both in the recliner while I tried to keep from falling asleep and dropping the baby. No sooner was the house all quiet again then Bobby 's phone rang, and he was up and out the door to work.

We remaining three slept in after our sleepless night until my alarm rang at 8, I scrambled an egg for Daniel, threw on ugly, comfy clothes and shoes and fed Alex, lesson well learned on Tuesday, and loaded Daniel into his carseat before he had a chance to ask for more eggs and suffer the disappointment of being turned down. 

This time was much better. I used the carseat and stroller for Alex, rolling it back and forth with my foot to keep him happy while I held Daniel. At one point, while I was helping the nurse as she accessed his port, the doctor shoved the bottle in Alex's mouth for me. The bloodwork took a fraction of the time to come back as it did on Tuesday, after which they shot a big syringe full of Vincristine into his port, de-accessed it, and we were free to go. The only mishap was a diaper blow out on the way home. Which reminds me...I need to go clean that out of the carseat tonight yet. The diarrhea continues, no diaper able to hold it. I have changed so many soupy diapers today, cleaning from ankles to armpits, I want to cry a little. I just heard him fill his diaper a minute ago. Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away. Buying cheap vinyl recliners and couches was a very fortuitius decision on our part. I can't imagine cleaning this mess out of upholstery, let alone real leather. But our furniture tolerates regular antibacterial wipedowns very nicely. 

His numbers blew us away today. Less than a week ago, his ANC was 38. A normal, healthy person's is around 1,500. 500 was our goal, after which he would no longer be neutropenic (severely immune-compromised). Today it was 829. This basically means that his immunity is all the way up to about fifty percent of what it should be, instead of around three percent like it was. It's not like we can just resume life as normal, but we can stop being completely paranoid and germophobic. His attending told me that this is probably as high as it will ever be during his treatment, because everytime it gets this high they will knock it back again with another whammy of chemo. And there will be times we can't give him chemo because his counts will drop again. But this is an indication of how well the chemo is working. And again, I am so grateful that we live in the decade we do. Modern medicine is going to let me keep my little boy, instead of having to buy a child-sized coffin. Yes, the havoc it wrecks on his little body is terrifying and heartbreaking, but cancer doesn't get to win- he gets to live, love, have his heart broken, struggle to earn a living, and maybe, if the chemo doesnt render him sterile, know this game-changing love for his own children someday. (And if it does, his own non-biological children?) 

And this- hair everywhere. I can't quite bring myself to shave it off just yet, doing so will make this all so much more real, but everytime I hold him, I end up wearing a hair suit. Then it sheds off me into our food, laundry, shows up between Alex's toes, flies up my nose when I have a boy in each arm and no free hands. 

And now, off to inspect the damage caused by this latest diaper fill, plus see about removing and cleaning a carseat cover.