LAST INPATIENT CHEMO

I am writing this blog from (hopefully) the last hospital room we will ever see at St. Jude! Caleb has been admitted for his 5th and final round of inpatient chemo!

But leading up to getting admitted on Tuesday, we had a whole weekend to kill and we made the most of it! We went to the movies to see Secret Life of Pets 2, and we went to the boys favorite arcade to play games.

But the most fun and special part of our weekend was attending the Memphis 901 FC Soccer game on Saturday night. We were invited by the organization Kids Kickin Cancer and we are so grateful our whole family was able to attend. The boys were excited to see their first ever pro soccer game. They have both played soccer so they couldn’t believe how fast the ball moved around the field, and how much the pros used their heads to pass the ball in the game. We enjoyed getting to know Chris and Michelle, the founders of Kids Kickin Cancer, and 3 of their children. The boys had a blast playing soccer with their daughters and were entertained all night! There were a couple other St. Jude families in attendance as well and we enjoyed meeting them and hearing their stories. It’s always comforting to talk to people going through the same things you are. We really enjoyed the whole evening and it was the highlight of our weekend!

Monday Tyler was at Summer Camp and Caleb and I spent the day at home playing games and making slime. The boys love to do “science” projects now, so slime was a fun one! They love to get messy!

And that brought us to Tuesday. We went in for blood counts and waited for the results. We got called back to a room in his clinic, and his nurse walked in, handed me the paper with his blood counts, and said “you made it!” His Hgb was above 8, platelets above 50, and ANC above 500. We hit all the numbers! I have never been so excited to go to a hospital room ha ha!

Inpatient stays are pretty boring, but Caleb makes the most of it by making all his nurses laugh! He is quite the entertainer, and no one can believe how much he can do and how well he talks for a 4 year old! Today Caleb had to go downstairs for another appointment and he brought his steering wheel with him and pretended to drive his wheel chair to the appointment. The nurse played along and kept asking him which way she should turn down the hallway. He got a huge kick out of it!

We also showed Caleb his “chemo” sticker on his patient bracelet and told him it will be the last time he ever has to have that on there. Of course he doesn’t realize how significant all of this is, but we do!

We played and did crafts most of the day. The good news is since this last cycle is shorter (he doesn’t have to take one of the chemos anymore) it’s looking like we will already be discharged on Thursday afternoon! This will be the shortest stay we have ever had! We will probably have to come home with a hydration pump for 24 hours, but we have done that before and it’s easy. As long as it means we can come home, we’ll do the hydration bag at home.

Of course we are extremely excited about getting this last hospital stay over with, but we are also getting a little nervous about going home. The thought of going home seemed so far away but now it’s actually going to happen… and probably in the next 4-5 weeks! It will all depend on how fast his counts recover, and then we have to have a few routine tests done before we leave, but I can’t believe that one day soon our doctor is going to say ok, you can go home!!!!!!!!!!!