The Results

Well did we ever start today off with some excitement.

About five minutes before Kean's bus came, his very first tooth

decided to exit his mouth.

I think Kean was a bit perplexed as to why Reese and I were 

so very excited.

 This afternoon we had his monthly testing at the hospital

to make sure that ol' enemy-- cancer is staying away.

Since this will be his last time using his port (he has surgery

on Thursday), I thought I'd walk you through how it all works.

After we numb it up at home and the nurse takes off

the "sleepy cream", she has to clean it with a very stinky

astringent.  My dear friend Pam Brown went with us today

and as you can see has to hold his hands and head up and away.

(We actually had to sanitize his chest twice because Kean licked it.

Ewww.  Gross-- if it tastes anything like it smells!).

 The worst part is usually inserting the thick catheter needle--

I don't think it really hurts him-- it is probably just some pressure.

But basically, inside his chest (we call it his third boob) is the port--

which I like to think of it as a rubber filled thimble.  The port

is connected to the main artery leaving the heart-- so all the Chemo

he used to get would go right into that main artery.

In today's case, we used his port just to get blood for all the 

tests they ran.

 However, once again, his port decided to live

up to it's nickname:  Persnickety Port.

He probably had some clotting or film grow over the port--

so the poor nurse could not get any blood- no matter

how hard she tried or how many different positions we put Kean in.

 Even though we earned an extra hour to our visit

(they had to order and administer an anti-clotting drug- TPA

and then wait for it to work- which it did), Kean was soon

all smiles.

 Love this picture-- gappy smile and all.

 Miss Jen- his favorite Child Life Specialist (it is her job to play with

the kids) gave him a darling red sweater as part of the Red Dress Project.

A little girl died of cancer a few years back.  This little girl

LOVED everything about red dresses.  When she died and her friends

asked her parents what they could do to help-- they answered donate red

dresses.  They now give out hundreds of red dresses each holiday season

to little girls fighting cancer and red sweaters to little boys.

By the way, that hard to get blood carried good news.

Kean's counts are looking good.  No worries and his immune

system is slowly starting to build.

Here, here!