The Week That Was

I know it's been a while, but Benjamin has put us through a mini heck in the past week. He was fine on Tuesday, and then hit the chemo wall on Wednesday. Finally, after three courses of chemo, Benjamin got a fever. All day Wednesday he was lethargic to the point of non-responsiveness. Every bodily fluid they could harvest was sent out for tests: blood, urine, stool. The night was rough, and Thursday was more of the same. Thursday night was a little scary because we thought that Ben would have to be transferred up to ICU because of low blood pressure. He wasn't in any immediate danger, but the meds to control the blood pressure require constant supervision and attention - thus the ICU. Luckily Benjamin never reached that bottom cut-off level and we stayed in 8D. However, we slept very little, because he was being tested every hour for most of the night. I finally got into my PJs at 3AM, after the doctor left for the last time. From that point on, Ben's pressure was only tested every 2 hours, but they had attached him to an archaic heart monitor (yay, three more wires to watch out for) which lit the entire room with an eerie green glow. Friday was horrible, because neither of us had slept much. Cranky baby and cranky mom - not a good combination. The only good thing is that Benjamin got a blood transfusion on Friday. My mom came in to spend the night and I went home and slept 10 hours. Of course, Benjamin slept the night too, and was on the road to being his normal self on Saturday. Lucky me, that he saves his most dramatic performances for me. On Friday they also started Benjamin on TPN, which is IV nutrition, since he stopped eating and drinking anything significant. He's received platelet transfusions on Saturday and today, Monday.

Benjamin still is running a fever, but is quite the happy camper none-the-less. In fact today he drove me nuts, sleeping less than two hours and wanting to be on the floor constantly. He can now pull himself up to standing in his crib and bang on the dome. The heart monitor wires are gone, as are all the IV lines except the TPN. We're waiting for his numbers to bottom out. When that happens (hopefully this week) it will be at least another two weeks before we're able to get him out of here for the next mini-vacation. The doctors warned us about this period. One called it "thumb-twiddling time". That doesn't make it any easier, especially when Benjamin is running fevers for no reason.

But right now, I'm going to call it a night, because it was a long day. I apologize for the terseness of this post, but lately I've had neither the time or brain power to think "deep thoughts". I just put Benjamin down an hour ago and walked out of the room. Hopefully when I go back, he'll FINALLY be asleep. And then it'll be time for me to get the shut-eye I so desperately need.