DAY THREE - SASH & STEELERS

Last night (Friday night) was another rough night....he is uncomfortable and wants to be held all night long. He would nurse for minute and fall asleep, I would try to lay him in his bed and he would wake up, scream then cry and repeat. The combination of drugs he is on will make him irritable (amongst a thousand other things), he's in pain and is nauseous. They can't give him tylenol as it will mask a fever and the biggest risk for him right now is infection. I shudder just typing the word. I thought we were germ a phobes prior to him getting sick, but we had nothing on our new selves. I finally put him down successfully at 7am and slept until 8am. Que shift change and more meds.....Thankfully I was able to take a nap this afternoon, its amazing how 2 hours of sleep can restart your body. I guess that's how we survived college now that I think about it. We gave him a bit of morphine today to get him to calm down. He rested for awhile and had a good nursing session. Thumbs up for that. It's the little things these days.

I received my first crash course in giving him meds today. Yet another situation I never dreamed to find myself in....giving my child medication intravenously through a port in their chest. But again this our path to walk and we will find our way through. Our day nurse was Uh-Maz-Ing. It takes a special person to become a nurse...and to be a pediatric nurse that specializes in cancer patients is just plain divine. Christina walked me through the process....SASH. Saline, Administer, Saline, Hep. Boom. Easy right?! She sure made it seem doable and hey let's face it, I don't have a choice once we are outpatient. If everything continues to go smoothly, we will be discharged on Monday. That is a scary thought for me, we'll be on our own during the day and return to the hospital for what they call "clinic", which is when he will receive the chemo. St. Jude is beyond amazing for many reasons and one of them is they will put us in a room/apartment at the Tri Delta house for the first few weeks and then move us to long term housing for the duration of his treatment here in Memphis.

They gave him some Zofran (for nausea) this afternoon which has seemed to help tremendously....we watched the Steelers win tonight - WHOOP WHOOP! Here's to a good night!

GO STEELERS (Pre-Diagnosis)

Sweet Boy