We have been so busy playing with Hayden that we haven’t been able to update his blog. He goes from having a crazy amount of energy to becoming tired out, other times he just wants to be held.

He has finished receiving all chemotherapy drugs.  The harsh effects will hit him later this week and next week.  From here until he leaves the hospital he will receive a constant dosage of different steroids, these are to prevent Graph vs. Host disease and to keep his body from attacking the new stem cells.   One added benefit of these are it has cleared up his skin and helped his breathing. 

He has continued to eat well only on his anti-nausea medication. We tried taking him off of it and he threw up, so maybe a few more days will help him out.  The longer we can keep him eating and off the feeding tubes the better.  I picked up some more prune juice since he is still struggling to have a bowel movement each day.   

The doctors expect him to be neutropenic (no immune system) for 21-28 days, then we should see a very gradual increase, this means the new marrow will be growing and producing cells. 

His cough still lingers but his chest X-rays still look the same each time which is good.  To help his breathing he receives a nebulizer treatment three times a day.  Also his stomach must be measured each day because it appeared to be larger, this could mean his liver is not funtioning properly.  His belly button seemed to be sticking out abnormally and so he probably has a hernia which will need to be fixed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Journal Entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.