Day 11

Ari is a peeing machine.  He's hooked up to IV fluids 24-7 and drinks about 16-32 oz of milk daily.  At home, I was used to changing 3-4 diapers per day (I probably should have changed him more often, but that's another story).  Now, we change a diaper almost every hour.  And if we don't, we get wet.  (Yesterday, I had to change my pants 3 times.)  And probably because he's not feeling well, Ari has a fit during every diaper change.  So today we wised up and asked for some pull-ups - easier on and easier off.

And like every request we make, within 10 minutes we were granted a box of size 5 pull-ups.  I thought they were pretty awesome.  Matt did not.  Check 'em out:

Front:

 Back:

Real men wear pink, right?  Wrong.  Matt refused to let the little guy wear the diaper.  (He also said no when the nurse suggested we put a sanitary pad inside the diaper.)  And he even made a joke when our doctor assured us the disease would not cause infertility that "if he wore the diapers provided, it would."  So we sent out Matt's dad in search of more manly pull-ups and...

Ta-da!  Mechanic?  Race car driver?  Construction worker?  Doesn't matter because as this pic shows...

...Ari is all boy!

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Daily update:

Another tough day.  Ari woke with fever (first fever he has ever had...like since he was born!) and cold symptoms so he is being treated as having both a bacterial infection and virus.  The bacterial infection is very common and expected but is cause for concern as the little guy has no way to fight infection himself since the chemo has wiped out all white blood cells.  The viral infection makes Ari a risk to the other patients on the floor so he is not allowed to leave the room for the time being.  In addition, both make him even more susceptible to outside germs and bacteria so his room is closed to the public.  We're hoping he recovers very quickly so we can have guests again soon.

And he's still not feeling well.  His tummy pain and nausea has definitely subsided (all food was kept down today - hurray!) but he's extremely tired and achy and if he could verbalize it would probably say, "Mom, wtf is going on?  I feel like sh*t."  He spent the majority of the day watching Elmo videos and sleeping.  We also think he has a mouth sore or two (common side effect) as he points to his mouth and makes a sad sound so we've been giving him morphine (gasp...a very very small dose) for pain and it helps (physically and emotionally).

Ari, say "morphine"...

Shabbat Shalom.