Alllll the way to day 19 here in the hospital.
The last 4-5 days have been the hardest for Ezra. As the white blood cells begin to come back, the entire body is already inflamed inside from the chemo going through there. The white blood cells all come in and go throughout the body to fight, and a by-product of this is a LOT of extra fluid in the body. His belly is huge now, which is a normal milestone in this treatment, but is causing him quite a bit of pain. He literally looks like he’s 9 months pregnant – stomach bulging, skin tight. His breathing is rapid and shallow because his belly is pressing up against his lungs, making it difficult to breathe. We don’t move him much, because even turning him hurts a lot.
The good news is this is all because his white blood cell counts ARE in fact coming back (which is one of the major points in this whole thing), so within the next 2-3 days the swelling should go down and his breathing will begin to come back to normal, and he will have an immune system working and rebuilding again.
Of course, Robyn is a /little/ frustrated with me since I’m actually leaving for San Francisco in about 2 hours. 😉 I’ll be there 48 hours on business, to provide live coverage for my site readers of Apple’s event where they’ll be launching the new iPhone. modmyi.com/live Monday at 10AM PST – you can watch too. 😉 I’ll be back Tuesday night, so Robyn is a trooper on her own the next couple days… love you, Robyn!
So… Ezra is FEELING worse, but doing better. If that makes sense…