And it doesn’t seem to be a train.  The last two days Cutler’s WBC has dropped from 11k to 4k yesterday (without neupogen) and then to only 3k today (without neupogen).  Dr Weinthal was very pleased with the 3k as he expected it to drop to 1500 to 2k.  He is now talking about what we can do to get Cutler home despite his slow progress on the bottle.  Melanie talked to him this morning, but this is what I understand so far…

Option 1 is to get a pump at the house and to run the tpn during the evenings, pretty much like we do here.  His only concern with this is the chance for infection as we would still be using the lines he has running straight to his vein.

Option 2 is to have a feeding tube put into his belly where we would just inject the nutrients.  The negatives to this is that he would have to go under general anesthesia, but any potential infection would not spread throughout the bloodstream immediately as it would be going only to the stomach.

From what Melanie has explained to me about her discuss with the doctor is that they would probably prefer the feeding tube as it would also help stimulate hunger because it is going straight to his stomach.  Will see how I interpret the conversation tomorrow when I get to speak to him and then we will make a decision together.

Now on to the time frame and again this is all speculation, but it sounds like that at the latest he will be home by next Friday.  And this all depends on the route we take, whether we go tpn or feeding tube.  I believe if we go tpn, he could be home sooner, but we can’t make our decision solely on this.  Let’s hope that Cutler will take the decision out of our hands and just start feeding from the bottle.  The occupational therapist is now working with him daily, so you never know.  He has definitely surprised us before.

Because it is so hard to find any new poses of Cutler for photos in this small room, I decided to take a quick video of him playing while laying in his crib.  It’s funny how he talks so much, until he realizes the camera is on.