November 8

The past few days have been all about the same. Cael is still quite uncomfortable most of the day, with little bits of playtime in between. We, obviously know he feels bad, but when every nurse comments about how he just isn't himself, you know something is up. He certainly has a reputation around here as being the cutest, best behaved, happy baby. They even call him the gerber baby. Everyone who comes in tries to get at least one smile before they leave. If they can't, they are quite bummed. lol.

His white blood cell count is still going up, but all the monocytes are gone again, and all the WBC are back to lymphocytes. That's not unexpected. They told us the numbers would be a bit of a roller coaster, but they will keep a close eye on everything. The ANC is still at 0, too. I guess a cord blood transplant usually takes a bit longer than a typical bone marrow transplant for the neutraphils to appear. So he is also getting GCSF, which is a medication that helps the cells multiply.

The doctors put Cael on a lasik drip a few days ago in order to get his weight down. He was taking in so much fluid from all the medications, but not getting rid of enough, so his weight kept going up. So now, he is down too much! So they are reducing the amount of lasik to find the right balance. It's so strange that I can tell that he has lost some weight. He feels lighter, even though it is only about 1 pound difference.

He has an appetite again, but he doesn't seem to be able to keep anything down. He went about a week without drinking anything at all again, but yesterday he took some, but then threw up immediately. He's been throwing up anyway, regardless of eating or not, but milk and even pedialyte make it worse. We have dealt with the throwing up so much we have a system down. We have the suction real close so we can get everything out of his mouth real quick and keep things clean as possible. Cael even tries to help sometimes. lol. At least he isn't afraid of the mouth suction!

The doctors say that he is doing very well. I know they were expecting some issues with the RSV and para influenza 3 that he had before the transplant, but it appears he is handling those better than expected at this point. I know that those still might cause some problems once his cells start to appear more, but at least for now he seems to be doing okay with that stuff.