Monday Madness

Madness is a little heavy but nonetheless my Monday was C R A Z Y!!!
Gary seems to be doing well and will have chemo tomorrow. His counts are up and his hemoglobin is holding around 10.0 (normal is 12.0 to 16.0).

Gary is oficially off of the Dilaudid drip (2nd attempt) and the doc is giving him Dilaudid pills for the breakthrough. He has upped his Methadone so we will see how well he does. I am not able to spend the night with him tonight because I needed to be home with Zachary so I won't know how he does overnight. He looked great tonight and his pain level was a 5 which is better than it has been in 4 months!

Oh Zachary...................what a long day with Zachary. I got a call at the hospital this morning at 6:45 AM (I can't even sleep in at the hospital)! He was crying and complaining of a terrible headache. He stayed home from school and I got home around Noon. He had 2 rounds of Tylenol and was asking for more. So, I started thinking about Zach's TARGET practice on Thursday. Zach seems to be a TARGET on the baseball field and as he was fielding a ground ball during practice the ball took a hop and hit him square between the eyes. For those of you who do not know Zach's history - basically he has a BULLSEYE on his forehead.

When his headache persisted I came to the conclusion that he needed to be checked out so that we could make sure that no damage had been done this time or during previous bouts with concussions.

We went to Hoag so that when we were done we could see Gary and bring his some dinner. After Zach has a CT Scan we came back to his room and his headache got worse and his ears were bright red. Low and behold he had 101 fever. Zach has the full blown flu - body aches, chills, fever and a stomach ache.

Back to his head. His head is fine from the beatings of baseball but they discovered a small cyst in his brain. The cyst is nothing to worry about and the neurosurgeon came to look at the film and told us that it is completely unthreatening and in fact it is very common in boys and men. I guess most people don't know they have them because they never have a reason to have a CT on their brain. Praise God because when the doctor came in and said, "Everything looks great as far as head injuries but we did find......................" My heart sank just a little until I heard cyst then I relaxed. I think God knows there is lots on my plate right now. Thank you God!

We went to see Gary and we looked like a couple of masked bandits! I wore the mask just like Zach did so that he didn't feel totally lame! We had a short visit with Gary and had to leave because Zach felt so awful. He is in bed next to me and he still feels terrible. Needless to say he will not be going to school tomorrow.

Nate and Jax had a great evening with Gay and my Mom. Thank God they are so incredibly easy going.

Thank you to everyone who is giving blood. We need either O+ or O- blood and you can call 764-5621 to donate at Hoag in Gary's name.
The doctors would like to see Gary come home by Sunday so we will shoot for that day! If it does not happen then so be it. Each day is its own and we never know from day to day what will be so I guess PRAY FOR GARY TO COME HOME BY SUNDAY!

Pray that this round of chemo doesn't make him super sick. We know his counts will drop and expect that but it would be nice if we could keep him from having too many other side effects.
Pray for ALL the people who love us and surround us and support us and care for us! This is a pretty BIG group of people so you can include everyone in 1 prayer :) !

We love you all and thank you for remaining so close to us through this trial!

Love, Lisa