Cutler spent today still recovering from the surgery.  He slept the majority of the night and woke up in a decent mood, but did require some pain meds throughout the day.  His stomach is a bit swollen still and so it makes it uncomfortable for him to sit up, so the majority of his day is either lying on his back in the bed or being held for comfort.  He did however spend a bit of time in his bouncy seat, which he seemed to enjoy.  His playful spirit is still definitely there, especially when the pain meds are in full effect.  🙂

We have started the feeding process via the tube tonight starting with pedialyte and around 3 am will switch to formula.  While pushing those, they are still pushing the TPN and the goal is to work our way off the tpn as we increase the formula via the tube.  Yesterday the doctor thought that Friday was still a good goal, but I just have the feeling with the amount of progress we need to make between now and then, it probably won’t happen.  Then again, my optimism has been squashed a bit lately and so perhaps I am just trying to avoid being disappointed.

Speaking of optimism issues, we finally got the results back on the test to determine where the cells are being generated and it was a bit disappointing.  It is currently 70% from the donor marrow and 30% from the original marrow.  While it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the doctors would have prefered to see something closer to 90/10.  Let me be clear, this was not a test of whether or not the leukemia has resurfaced.  The doctors are still pleased with how well Cutler is doing and they did say that the percentages could still change in favor of the donor.  It was also mentioned that this test is normally done around day 100, so it might have been a bit premature.  The next step is to, in a few weeks, perform some more molecular tests to determine if the mll is still around.

I’ll be very honest here and let you all know that I didn’t take this news well and am still working through it.  This was very disappointing to hear after feeling like we were well on our way down easy street.  While the news isn’t necessarily bad and as mentioned above, I am just tired of being knocked down every time it seems like everything is going good.  I don’t want to complain and be negative, so our only choice is to pick ourselves back up and continue to push on with the fight.  All I need to do is look into the eyes of our beautiful baby boy and the determination that exists within his heart pushes me back into the fighting mood.  Please everyone continue to pray for our baby Cutler to continue the fight and for God to continue to heal as we obviously still have a very long road ahead of us.  Getting him home on Friday, Saturday, or whenever it will be, is just another milestone of many still to surpass and this news has quickly reminded me of this.