Houston... We Have Lift Off!

Doing a happy dance over here.

We got our escape papers this afternoon from the hospital.

His counts are back looking how they usually look (not normal but cancer normal).

And I'll tell you... both of us were more than ready to break out of here by then.

We are still waiting to hear the testing results and if he needs

an antibody transfusion.  The doc made it sound like if so, we can just get that next week

when we go in for Chemo on Tuesday.

Yep... get him feeling better to get him sick again.

 I'm home so I can finally load some pictures.

Here is right while I was fixing dinner Thursday when he

started crashing.

 You can tell this is his go to position for when he is not feeling well.

Here we are at some point during our six hour E.R. visit.

 Yep.  Miserable. 

My mom brought the girls up last night before what I wistfully

like to refer to as bedtime.

But we all know in the hospital, there is no such thing.

The Barkettes' made him get well cards and pin wheels

to decorate his room.

Then they proceeded to eat every granola bar or snack

they could find.  I seriously think they think the hospital is 

a fun place.  Silly children.

Our final night wasn't much better than the first torturous one.

Alarms went off for air in his tubing.

He's on IV fluids so woke up at 3 a.m. with

a soaked diaper, soaked pajamas, blankets and bedding.

And the piece' de resistance?

His port stopped working!!!

The nurse finally got it to take antibiotics and fluids

but once again, he had some clotting issues and

the nurse could not get any blood.

Sooooooo, at 5 a.m. she started him on

TPA (anti clotting med) and actually did two rounds of this.

By 7, it still wasn't working so the doc on call ordered

a "dye test" downstairs to see if they could see the cause.

At 8, just as we were getting ready to go, his port started swelling

and oozing blood.

Which actually was a good thing.  It saved him from more

radiation (the kid has had a ton in his life) in the form of the dye test.

The nurses de-accessed his port, we cleaned him up, numbed him up

and then accessed him again.

And this time, Voila!!!!  The red stuff.

By this point, if we are being honest with each other, I was

a mess.  Can someone please explain to me 

1.  Why life has to be so continuously stressful and unfair for this beloved boy?

2.  Why we can NEVER go into the hospital and just deal with

the infection or whatever it is that landed us there in the first place?

Why there is ALWAYS all this other drama?????

Really, I should just be thankful we got blood, his port is still working

and WE ARE NOW HOME!

p.s.  Thank you for all of the prayers and sweet notes of support.

You have no idea what that means and how that keeps us going.