Day 21

Let’s start with some good news! Yesterday William, myself, Millie (golden retriever) and our watchful nurse all walked down the hall (100 + feet) Today, we plan on walking to the play room in the pediatric oncology wing J Also, William is no longer Neutropenic! WOOHOOO! Okay, now on to some medical data. -----Never would I have thought that I would come across so much contradiction... One would think that having a high WBC is a good thing, right? NO! Today William's WBC is up to 26.8 (normal is between 4.5 and 13.5) this means that his body has a large infection somewhere. The team is not really sure where the infection is because all the blood culture tests that they have done during the last week have all come back negative. Another contradiction for the day… Antibiotics are bad! In the last 12 hours William has had intense diarrhea from the antibiotics and therefore my poor little boy spent most of the night waiting for us to change sheets, clean him, and disinfect IV lines and broviak caps. Remember the ultra sound he had on his bladder? Well the results are back and there is a large mass in his bladder. Due to the lack of blood flow in the "mass" they do not believe it is cancer and it is most likely a large blood clot. This stupid mass is the reason the catheter keeps getting blocked and is also the reason for the immense pressure that he has been having. So, today there is a lot of discussion between a lot medical professionals trying to figure out what the heck they are going to do to get rid of it. No one wants to do surgery because his WBC shows that there is already an infection somewhere and the last thing they want to do is make things worse. The other risk is that the catheters could just be making the problem worse but, they cannot remove it because the blood count in the urine is still high and if they removed the catheter the blood clots would be too big for him to pass on his own… Randell is still working and it is so hard on everyone (most of all him) when he cannot be here with us during all the “crappy” times. Because we are a single income family it is necessary for him to continue working. William and I love him so much and we understand that he needs to take care of our other responsibilities………….It’s just a “sucky” situation all around! Thank you for all the love, support and prayers! William really loves the emails and blogs! He get’s a huge kick out of the jokes (please send more) Keep on Keeping on.