The title and the videos should say enough, but to be clear I do say horror in the video. Sometimes I mumble, so I wanted to be clear I didn’t talk about a great little house in Texas.
Category Archives: Cutler
All things Cutler
You Say Tomato
Cutler says “Yuck!”
Yesterday, while attempting to increase the vegetable intake in my diet I offered up some cherry tomatoes to Cutler. Here is the outcome and it is very similar to Melanie’s typical response to tomatoes as well. What’s surprising is that he actually went for a second one.
Happy Belated Easter
I know it’s been a very long time and I don’t really have any updates. Just wanted to share this picture from over the weekend…complete with real rabbits and real rabbit poop. Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! The boys are doing great.
Photos – Because I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title
Just thought I would put up a couple of pictures from my quick trip to the park with Cutler on Sunday when Melanie and Mason had a date to the puppet show. Fortunately there are some pretty cute ones, unfortunately he is wearing what seems to be the only sweatshirt he ever seems to wear when I have cute pictures of him. I promise, he has other clothes, so no need to send anything. And I am working on putting together pictures from his birthday party.
Melancholy Bliss
Cutler had his bi monthly oncologist visit this morning and before the title worries everyone, I will let you all know that everything is great. His blood work is still marvelous and still no concerns. In fact, in between visits he has managed to overcome a nasty stomach virus and a double ear infection so he has been putting his new immune system to the test with no issues. The reason for the title is that it was just so much more difficult of a visit than it has been in the past.
Perhaps it is due to the lack of visits, but as I stepped off the elevator I got sick to my stomach as a sense of stress just rushed through me as it did the very first day when I first saw the “Texas Oncology” sign for the first time. Then as we walked into the waiting room it was a much more somber experience than normal as there appeared to be a family with a teenager waiting in one area and despite Cutler’s best area a smile wasn’t to be found. On our way out I ran into another gentlemen, I believe he is around 20, that I had met at the Christmas party that appears to have lost a leg between then and now. Fortunately he had a big smile on his face and waved to Cutler, so it put a bit more of a smile in my heart on the way out.
All of that just to remind us all of how fortunate and blessed we are that today was just another normal check up for our healthy two year old.
Monkey See Monkey Do
I am sure it happens with all siblings, but Cutler is in the stage where he imitates everything that Mason does. These videos show it a bit, although the first video is more like a couple of monkeys just dancing around. Yes, that is Grandma in the background that you hear talking. She and Grandpa are in town so you will probably find that I will be quite active on the blog during their visit as it pains me to watch my father watch soap operas that he has recorded on my dvr all night long. (cue the song “Where have all the cowboys gone”)
In this second video I find it a bit ironic that Mason just got done slamming Cutler’s hands together as Grandma starts talking about how gentle he is with Cutler. Although, in her defense, until that point he has been extremely gentle with him and usually is extremely cautious of hurting him.
Belated Birthday
Monday was Cutler’s 2nd birthday and all things considered a rather uneventful one. Mainly because his big party is on Saturday. He did learn to sing happy birthday to himself. Below are a couple of videos and a few pictures of his effort to show us that he is two, not three, not four, not five, but two years old.
Brothers, For Better Or Worse
It’s been quite awhile since I have posted and I apologize. We have pretty much just been living the simple life. Mason is playing hockey and soccer and baseball practice is about to start. We haven’t started Cutler in any sports yet, but with him turning two tomorrow it is just around the corner and based on his desire to do everything Mason does I suspect he will be playing all of the same sports. This morning Cutler was following Mason around trying to take every toy that Mason had and after awhile it finally got Mason to the point where he told me that he wished he didn’t have a little brother like that. I am sure kids say these types of things all of the time, and it didn’t help that Cutler was calling Superman “badguy”, but given our situation it broke my heart to hear him say it. After a quick “pep” talk he quickly changed his tune and returned to entertaining Cutler to the best of his abilities. It probably also helped that he was going to get to spend the afternoon with just me at the hockey game, so when we got home he was happy to play with Cutler even more. 
Bathwater…mmmmm
Cutler’s latest trick is drinking bathwater and then telling me how yucky it is, or at least his version of lucky and then flashing his big smile. I guess he had to wash down his three slices of pizza with something.
There’s A Light At The End Of The Tunnel
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.
Team Fricke 