Day 27

I can't believe I have to do this, but... regarding yesterday's post... no, Lea Michele was not actually in our hospital room.  Our doctor is her doppleganger.  I apologize for the confusion (what's the saying?  gullible was taken out of the dictionary?).  Please don't take me seriously in the future.

Now we can move on...
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I remember a year ago telling a friend at MyGym about my blog.  Another mom overheard and asked, "why obsessed with poop?" and I said, "I don't understand.  Aren't all moms obsessed with poop?" and she replied "no" and then never spoke to me again.  (That's cool.  Obviously we didn't have much in common.) 

Around here, everyone is obsessed with poop.  The pro's measure input and output very carefully, they inspect the output (in much greater detail than I ever have), and then they let us know how to medicate to make the poop medically acceptable.  Oh, and they call it "stool".  A typical daily ass-essment these days sounds a little like this:  "Ari consumed 4580 mls and stooled 1654mls, the stool was hard with unprocessed food, Mr. Goldwasser needs to be stooling at least 3 times a day to prevent anal fissure which could cause infection.  Due to the very large amount of food he is consuming and the relatively small amount he is stooling, his belly is hard and distended.  Today he will be given 3 doses of lactalose to assist with the movement of his bowels and we will re-ass-ess tomorrow." 

(I'm pretty sure my daily report would sound exactly like his...distended belly and all.)

It bums me out that I no longer find much humor in Ari's poop.  It's just (#)2 much to think about every day.  After all this is behind us, I may have to change the name of this blog. 

(Who am I kidding?)
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Daily update:

If yesterday was a 9 on the "steroids are totally annoying" scale, today was a 5.  In other words, it was a much more fun day for all of us.  Though we were instructed by the little guy to "go" to the garden at least 20 times, and then immediately told to "go" right back to the room, Ari spent most of the day happily playing with toys, pushing his little car, and of course, eating.  He gained another .4 kg since yesterday (that's almost a pound!).  He now has a huge chin under his chin and very large cheeks but we were told the steroids would make him puffy.  (That must be it...not the potato chips, pizza, pasta, french fries, and middle of the night meals.)

In other news, we're just waiting for Ari's numbers (specifically the ANC count) to rise so that we know what's going on with the next phase of treatment.  The average kid takes 32 days to have an ANC count over 500 (needed for both the bone marrow test and also phase 2 of treatment) so we still have a few more days to go.  In the meantime, we just wait and hope tomorrow's numbers have increased so we can finalize the BM test.  This number in no way determines whether or not there is still cancer in the bone marrow.  However, Ari's platelets, red blood cells, white blood, and other good cells are continuing to rise which is still a very very very good sign that his marrow is producing only healthy cells. 

Here we are today (Mommy and Daddy doing some 4th of July arts and crafts & Ari spending some time outside)...

Dream of a high ANC count!