I hate to start a post like this, but I am shocked at the hatred generated by my last post introducing the newest Cubs fan.  See the picture below, how could you want to break up such love between a father and a son?

In a few months you can fully expect to see both of my boys in full Cubs gear.  And we don’t care how much we lose, although it does cause pain year after year after year.  Cubs nation can hang their head high knowing that they didn’t win anything with a cheater like Mark McGuire on their team.  And before you bring up the Sosa thing, just remember that we didn’t win anything with him either.  🙂

Disclaimer:  This was all said with tongue in cheek.  I am used to my family badgering away.  I let them have their moments, because when Hell freezes over we will be the ones waving the pennant!

On to Cutler…

WBC was up to 5200 and the ANC was over 3000.  The doctor has stopped the neupogen for now and said that we should fully expect the WBC to drop at first and if it is slow to go back up they will use the neupogen as a kick-start.  Still the same in terms of eating, but they are stepping up the effort to give the medicine orally.

Another good increase for Cutler.  His WBC was 4100 and ACN was 3034.  Doctors have stopped the lipids with hopes it would help get him hungry and starting to eat, which appears to be work for the baby food, but he is still showing no interest the bottle.  The doctors have also started to change some of the medicine to oral, which he seems to be open to which is great news for now.  It’s looking like eating from the bottle will most likely be the long pole in this process, but I believe that he will start when he is ready.

These numbers keep getting better and better!  Today we hit 3200 for WBC and ANC was 2208!  In addition to that, he took formula for me via syringe and ate some baby food this evening.  The doctors continue to assure us that he WILL start to eat as his numbers increase.  So we just need to be patient.

Last night was quite eventful – I woke at midnight to a constant and loud noise in the room.  Apparently the ventilation system was over-filtering and we were literally suctioned into the room!  Needless to say, sleep was elusive until 4:30ish.  The system wasn’t repaired during the day…much to Grammy’s frustration…so Cutler and I are waiting to be moved to a different room, just for overnight.  They will repair the ventilation in our room tomorrow morning, then we can move back.  I pray that Cutler and I both get a good night’s sleep tonight.

Above are a few pictures from today.  You can see Cutler is a happy boy, as usual.  He wasn’t so sure about the hat after he had it on for a few minutes!  And we used Mason’s window chalk to decorate his windows.  I will have to assure Nancy and Maggie, the cleaning ladies, that I will remove chalk when we are discharged 🙂

Thanks for the continued prayer…we’re getting close to getting out of here and resuming a somewhat normal life.  God is great to the Fricke Four!

You want good news?  You can’t handle the good news! 

This morning we received some great news as his WBC is 2600!  That’s right, a 900 point increase.  And to make things even better, his ANC was 2000!  The plan is to give one more dose of neupogen and then watch the count to see if he can grow the cells without the stimulant.  If so, we have met criteria 1 of 3 to get discharged.

The second criteria is to eat so that we can be free of the TPN.  So far he is all over the map with this effort.  Some days he eats the baby food and some days he doesn’t have too much interest.  Today happened to be one of the days that he had no interest, but we were however able to get him to take some formula via a syringe.  So hopefully over the next few days we can work this up to actually drinking from the bottle and perhaps with the less medicine he takes, this will start to happen along with the increase in the white cells.

The third and last criteria is to take medicine orally and today was the first of the efforts and it was successful.  Granted it was only Tylenol, but still very good news that he was willing to take some medicine orally as this has also been a huge issue in the past.

I don’t want to set expectations and be too optimistic, but as long as he starts to eat I think he could realistically be home within two weeks.  Our fingers are crossed and prayers in full force for the continued improvement.  We had a great day with Mason, home sick from school, playing and actually watching a movie in bed with Melanie as well.  The only things missing were Cutler and pizza.

We are up to 1700 today!  The doctors will now allow visitors…Aunt Ellen and Cousin Austin wasted no time getting up here!  Cutler was pretty chill today, he played a little but not like usual.  Perhaps that’s because he kept Daddy up last night!  He did eat some baby food and took a tiny amount of formula for Grammy.

Will post pictures tomorrow, along, I hope, with an even higher WBC number.

Ditto to Aaron’s earlier post!  The pictures above are from Friday night.  Developmentally, he is starting to roll over more now (he was doing this before going into the hospital for his transplant…one step forward, two steps back), despite being tethered to the IV pole.  We feel certain that once he is off the IV, he will catch up to all his other buddies and cousin and be crawling…or perhaps he’ll skip crawling and just start walking!

Mason had another indoor soccer game today.  He did a pretty good job defending the goal and he tried to get his foot on the ball, along with the other 7 kids on the field!  Safe travel to Aunt Pat who flies in tomorrow afternoon for another visit.  Mason is very excited that she is coming here just to see him 🙂 

Thanks for the continued prayer; we feel it!

I have lost track of what day it is in this process and the lights are off so I can’t see the board to remind me.  Regardless, another day another increase in the WBC and the ANC.  The WBC is up to 1600 this morning and not sure what the ANC is, but it was high enough that the staff no longer has to wear masks and this seems to be confusing Cutler.  I think he actually misses seeing the masks as it was entertainment for him.  Either way, this is a big milestone for us and now that the WBC has continued to improve the doctors have reduced the neupogen to one serving per day to see if he can continue to produce without as much catalyst.  Still no progress on drinking from a bottle, but he does like the baby food…unfortunately he requires us to use his pacifier as a spoon.

Oh and an update on the broken furnace, it was fixed again, but they decided to go ahead and move us to another room yesterday.  The room is a bit larger, but more importantly the furnace works consistently and the door is rather quiet.  The nurses are now able to slip in like a ninja in the night.

Last night was very cold as the room’s heater turned into an AC and quickly turned the room into an ice box.  Fortunately Cutler slept through all of it while they fixed it.  What you don’t see in the picture above are the three blankets underneath the one on top.  It was finally fixed around 11 pm, but is now malfunctioning yet again.  If it isn’t fixed within the next hour, we are changing rooms and I don’t care who they have to displace in order to do so.  Can’t afford to expose Cutler to this type of atmosphere.

Despite the cold, Cutler’s white cells continue to grow.  This morning his WBC is at 1500 and his ANC is at a whopping 1050.  Another day or two of this and the masks will be gone.  Once the WBC gets up above 2000 for an extended period of time, they will look to decrease the neutrogen meds to see if he can maintain the  growth of the cells.  So while we are feeling good about the growth, we still have more goals ahead of us.

Cutler has now decided that it is fun to stick his tongue out.  Not sure why as I don’t recall this being a big thing with Mason, but Cutler really enjoys it and if it weren’t for the smile that follows I would think he actually means it. 

It’s also a great increase for a WBC.  Cutler’s WBC jumped from 800 to 1200 overnight.  The ANC is also holding steady in the mid 600’s.

Cutler’s eating continues to struggle and so yesterday an occupational therapist was brought in and provided a list of activities to do to help stimulate the feeding effort.  One of those is to dip the pacifier into the food and he ate quite a bit of apple sauce this way.  However the effort to get him to drink from the bottle is still not going well, but it is something we will continue to push on.  We are working on pushing some formula, using a syringe, into his mouth when he is working away at the pacifier.  The first attempt resulted in a massive gagging reflex, very similar to when we try the bottle.  There is something about the taste that he just has a bad reaction to, but hopefully that will change as the WBC continues to increase and his taste buds return.