Whoops, sorry, things have been so busy I missed posting updates for a whole week! My bad. 😉
So Ezra got out of his second round of chemo on Saturday around 2pm (5 days ago), and we came home and rested. He took this round much better. Monday we visited the hospital again to get his blood work done (Mondays and Thursdays, every week!), which was all good – he didn’t need anything, and we were able to get home by 2ish. Not bad. 😉
Yesterday (Tuesday) we trekked over to St Pete to visit All Children’s Hospital, where Ezra will be getting his stem cells harvested in 6 weeks or so, as well as where he’ll be getting them transfused back into him after the surgery to remove his tumor (4 months or so from now?). That will be an intense admission – he’ll have zero immune system, so we’ll be at All Childrens for over a month in a HEPA filtered isolation room. Whew. Not looking forward to that, but whatever it takes to get this little man well is what we’re going to do.
The drs at All Childrens were extremely informative and easy to talk to, so that’s nice. And by the time we get there, they’ll be done with the new hospital they’re building, and we’ll be staying there – so nice new digs. 😉
Ezra is still doing well. He’s strong and happy. You can tell he’s starting to get annoyed of the hospital – he cries at drs, and doesn’t like when we get out the alcohol swabs (shots!). Course, I wouldn’t either.
Robyn and I are pretty tired, but we’re also blessed with a lot of you guys’ prayer and help. My mom keeps coming around and tidying up the house, doing the dishes, putting stuff away… things that are small but help out a ton when you’re doing so much. MOPS keeps bringing meals. Some of you have brought gift cards to restaurants, which helps as well – all those dinners and gift cards also make it easier with so little time. A few close friends have stopped by to help out and just be comic relief as well. All that means more than we can say, and if we haven’t personally thanked any of you, I apologize – we’re running a bit ragged around here, and keeping track of everything is tough. We’re at the hospital 5 days a week even when we’re not admitted it seems, with meetings, labs, and other things. And a REALLY SHORT hospital visit is 3 hours… we find our free time is pretty much gone.
We seem to have the insurance taken care of – between state and federal programs, we were able to get nearly everything so far and in the future covered (from what we’ve been told). Turns out everyone agrees pediatric cancer is just plain a crap thing to happen, and a lot of programs exist to help out, regardless of income level. This has been a huge blessing to us, as bills from October alone will be well over $75,000. And there’s a minimum of 7 months, multiple surgeries, and over 2 months of admitted time ahead of us. We’re praying everything is covered, which the social workers seem to say it will be. It isn’t set it stone yet, though, and we’re also not sure about deductibles, etc. We’ll see what happens.
I suppose that’s enough chattering for now. I’m going to take my wife out on a hott date, courtesy of my mom and dad watching Ezra so we have a couple hours. 😀 Ciao.