Not even Dr Lenarski.  Cutler is either extremely inquisitive or just untrustworthy of any doctor or nurse as he will not turn his away when one is in the room.  Thus the photo above from this morning.  Actually he likes everyone, but does keep a close eye on them, especially when they have a fun stethoscope to play with.

Last night was a bit of a rough night, but not for Cutler.  At 3 am, Cutler woke up as happy as a peach and ready to play.  Fortunately I was able to get him back to sleep a bit later, but these fun new IV pumps that they have installed keep me up all night with constant alarms going off and unfortunately if I don’t get up and call for the nurse, they would just wake Cutler.  However, Cutler did manage to sleep through the alarms until a little after 8am and once again was ready to play. 

He has now gone 24 hours without a fever and today is the most energetic I have seen him in quite some time.  Dr. Lenarski, the Godfather of Pediatric Transplants (I named him that), says that it could be in part due to the steroids they are giving him, but we can’t keep him on the steroids as it is too much to ask the body to keep processing along with all of the other medicines.  The steroids were an effort to help him get over this little hump and then we will see where we go.  He also said that we could probably expect to see his fever return as the steroids are slowly withdrawn.  As for pain, Cutler is doing quite well.  He does still have the constant drip, but we haven’t had to press the button to add more too often.  He has started to get purple dots on his face that you may notice the pictures below and this is due to his low platelets level.  They are pretty much like a bruise, but should disappear as his platelets start to elevate.

That’s it for now.  Tomorrow is Grammy’s first day on the job and we are hoping that she performs to a satisfactory level so that we don’t have to fire yet another grandma from hospital duty.  A little secret, my mom actually isn’t have back issues, but was actually sent home by Melanie because she wasn’t cooking dinner enough.  Just kidding, it was actually a request by Dr. Ghisoli as he was growing concerned about her tendency to stalk by his house.  It was either her go home or a restraining order put in place.  Ok, seriously, just kidding, mom is now home afer a long car ride home and has her first appointment to figure out what needs to be done tomorrow at 2pm.

Tomorrow is also a breakfast with Santa for Mason and then I am helping him skip school for a special day trying to get a photo with the mall Santa and then lunch and a movie for the boys.  Looking forward to hitting the bars with him afterwards.  He is a real ladies man.

Here are a few photos from this morning with Cutler:

This last one is my favorite.  All bruised and smiley.   I think he has a future as a hockey player.

We got a bill from the insurance company the other day stating that we had to pay the extra amount for the private room since they did not agree to a private room.  So despite the fact that there are only private rooms in a transplant unit due to the low to no immune system required for a transplant, we now must go through the appeal process.  It’s a good thing Melanie handles these things, becaue I do not do well with stupidity and would quickly lose my cool.  I will save you all from my soap box and start working on the update of the day for Cutler…it’s a good one.

Cutler had a much better day today where he had a fever for only a short period of time and otherwise his temperature has been normal.  He is still in pain periodically, but not to the point that the magical button doesn’t resolve it quickly.  He still has mucus that causes minor choking resulting in vomiting, but he started to receive steroids today and tomorrow that will hopefully help.  The blood tests have not revealed any infections yet, but the doctors say that we must assume that there is one and so we are still running with the antibiotics to be safe.  Dr Lenarski did comment that for day 12, Cutler looks really good but we should still expect the fever to come back.

As for mom, she has made the right but very difficult decision to head home to have her disc issue resolved.  While we are happy to have her here for any potential surgeries, I believe it is more important to be home where she can work with doctors that she is used to and can get referrals.  More importantly both of my loving sisters can dote over her every need.  Hopefully it won’t require surgery, but we will hopefully see over the next couple of days.  For now it will be a difficult and drug riddled ride home tomorrow.  We will definitely miss having her here, but this is the right decision so that she can be well enough to come back and play with Cutler pain-free further on down the road. 

Fortunately the doctors have allowed us to replace her in the rotation so Grammy, Barbara, is stepping in to help relieve us throughout the days.