Andrew is still in the hospital.  However, yesterday some decisions were made to switch things up and hopefully this stay is coming closer to an end.  His red blood cells and neutrophils were low again so he got a whole blood transfusion last night, and the medication to help his body produce more neutrophils.  It was also decided that he needed a feeding tube, so he would have dual nose hoses; one to suck the fluid out of his stomach the other in his digestive tract to feed his gut which has had no feeds for 5 weeks.  He had it installed this morning and did such an amazing job…he seriously is one of my heroes!  There is talk about different medications and procedures to get him back to where he was so we can go home, including steroids to help decrease the inflammation in his GI tract, botox injections in this stomach to help it move more, and switching other meds to see if they work better.  So keep those fingers and toes crossed and I will update soon. 

Dual Nose Hose

Andrew is still in the hospital, his counts are slowly coming up with the help of some medications and beginning to heal the infections in his GI tract, which is causing inflammation and pain in his abdomen.  He has a medicated pain patch and additional morphine when he needs it.  He has continued to have little emotional breakdowns, but is content and pleasant most of the time.  Yesterday his stomach did put out more fluid than we he had on earlier days.  This is kind of set back, but we are hoping his stomach will empty enough to no longer need the stomach vacuum before he leaves the hospital.  Over the weekend the Children’s Hospital closed visitation down to anyone other than parents and grandparents because of the Swine Flu, darn piggies, they don’t think this will lift until after winter, and makes me sad but we know it is to help.  Here’s hoping for just one more day at the hospital then HOME!!!!

Andrew is in the hospital right now…but I would like to update you on the fun stuff first.  So Andrew had a pretty fun weekend, we went to Stanley, Idaho and stayed at a friend’s cabin.  It was absolutely gorgeous and even though he had a rough time on Saturday, Sunday he was able to go see the sites and enjoy the beauty. 

Andrew and Wendy at Custer Ghost Town

Taylor and Andrew enjoying the beautiful backyard

Andrew and Momma loving the sunset

Andrew wearing his pj's on his head and posing for Wendy

Andrew and Jack enjoying the live music concert at Redfish Lake

Andrew will be released from the hospital today YAY! He had some fun visitors and our good friend Nadine, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy as well. She brought her wonderful faux eyebrows to share with Andrew. I laughed so hard!!!! He also had visits from friends and family which helped him pass the time.

Old Man Brows

Not So Angry Angrybrows

Unibrow

I just met with the GI specialist, and he was a bit shocked to hear all that has been going on with Andrew. He is scheduling a time to go in and look at Andrew’s digestive tract and do some biopsies, as well as look at his stomach and take some biopsies there too to try to find out why all of this is happening. He wasn’t able to give much more information about what could be causing and how it could be fixed since it has so many symptoms and has been going on for almost two months. He will be going in to do it tomorrow morning.

Andrew has just completed his 7^th round of chemo. Two more to go! He is still in high spirits and was excited to meet with his new St. Luke’s teacher yesterday and had his first lesson back with tutor today.  He has had more permanant hearing loss and so they have lowered the amount of one of his chemo’s down to 50% in hopes that he will not have too much more and need a hearing aid. His MRI results are back as well, and it is the same, still has the dark spots, but they have not grown, so we will still hope that it is scare tissue and pray it doesn’t grow.

His digestive tract has not recovered, in fact quite the opposite, the IV nutrients are also going straight through him and he is losing weight because of it. We will be seeing a specialist about it and please think positive thoughts that this can be reversed. Thanks for all the support and I will update again soon.