Hello!
Schoooooool's out for SUMMA! School's out for eva!
Happy First day of Summer!
I hope all of you are doing well. We had a WONDERFUL summer day and we are SO lucky that we can both be home with William. We got up this morning, had a quick breakfast and headed out for our 1st successful bike ride with William in the Burley bike trailer! Last time we tried he screamed the whole time. (Now we can laugh about it). We're pretty sure it was the helmet. It kept falling over his face. Today Paul fiddled with it and finally it stayed up so he could look around and enjoy the ride. He was smiling a lot too. I can say that I was pretty tired by the time we got home (I was lucky enough to be the puller!)
After napping today, we enjoyed the heat by getting wet with Will's sand and water table and his blow up pool. He loved them both! He loves to splash and isn't afraid to get his face wet. As Paul was blowing up the pool Will climbed all over it laughing. Later as Paul was spraying the water into it, he immediately climbed in it clothes and all! We had the stereotypical kid with the HUGE white saggy diaper after a few minutes.
We got some SUPER news last week and I have been dying to sit down and blog so we could share it with you! (I need to back up though first and share a quick "Debbie Downer" moment 1st).
On Saturday June 6th, Willy woke up with a pink eye that looked puffy and swollen. As the day went on it worsened a little and worried us some so we called the on-call Hematologist. He said not to worry unless it got redder or he developed a fever. The next day he woke up and it seemed as though it had switched to the other eye. I had a crazy day running from a baby shower to a wedding shower that both started at the exact same time. One in Farmington and the second one in Woodbury. By the time I got home Paul was getting pretty worried because William had a fever of about 100.3. We called the Hematologist and they decided we needed to bring him in to the E.R. to be seen. By the time we got there the poor baby looked miserable. Both eyes were pink, half closed because they were swollen, and weepy and his nose was constantly running clear. The Dr. felt that it could be just pink eye, but it can be caused by allergies, viruses, or infection (which for William is the worry!).
They took blood samples and set him up with an IV just in case he needed it for antibiotics later. After a few hours they came to tell us something GREAT... His neutrophil count came in at 4,000 (1,500 is bottom of normal range) and this was his trough day meaning he was due for his shot of G-CSF medicine later that night. That meant he should have been at his lowest point before getting the meds. We were all astounded. The Dr. was so happy that she said, "I like these numbers so much that we get to treat him like a "Normal" kid." She sent us home with eye drops for pink eye and that's it! She asked us to follow up with his pediatrician in a few days.
He did develop a horrendous cough and cold by the time we got to his Dr. appt on Wednesday. With the stress of our last week of school and everything going on it was really tough. His fevers continued from Sunday until Wednesday and we decided on our own to start using his nebulizer to help him breathe. We had to keep him home from daycare and we were SO lucky that my dad was willing to take him since he was already busy being "Yaya" (Grandpa) with my nephew Linden who was staying with he and my mom for two weeks. DR. Warnken thought he looked pretty good and was happy with all we had done. He said the nebulizer was the right choice and he was optimistic that Will would start getting better soon. He was able to go back to day care for his last two days and we got through our final days of the school year.
Ok back to the good news:
This last Wednesday, we took William for his scheduled finger poke to check his neutrophil count. We are now taking him every 3 weeks. This has been nice, less pokes for him and less running around for us. Any way...about an hour and a half later I got an unexpected call from our hematologist Dr. Schultz. She said that she had his results from his poke. I said, "The one from last Sunday in the E.R. right?" Surprisingly she already had his counts from that day! She was so pumped to share that his ANC was 4,061! This again was a trough day. She said that because he has had two good counts in a row, we could start spacing his shots out a little more! Now instead of getting a shot every other day, he gets a shot of G-CSF every third day. We are all so happy and hopeful that he is on a slow path to growing out of his Neutropenia. We'll see and we definitely won't celebrate that yet, but at least this little bit of news is great for now!
Hope everyone had a great Father's day with family! We had a nice day together.
Tomorrow William and I are off to a playdate with his baby guy friends at a pool. Should be awesome!
Take care and wear sunscreen!
~Katie, Paul, and William
