Day 87 - Building confidence

     Ever since returning home Cristy and I have been slowly trying to build Evan's confidence back up in eating, walking and how he views himself with basically no hair.  The title of this blog could lead you to believe that the confidence problem is Evan's alone,  however Cristy and I are also working on our confidence.  What activities could harm Evan?  How hard should we push him in his rehab?  How safe is it to take him out in public?  These are just some of the questions and concerns we struggle with daily.

Big brother passing on some knowledge to his little brother.

     Friday Evan went to clinic for his latest doses of chemotherapy drugs.  He gained a bit more weight, now up to 19.2 kg, which was very encouraging to all of us nursing him back to health.  His blood counts looked strong, albeit a little lower than previous weeks.  Platelets, WBC, ANC and hemoglobin were all down, but none were dangerously low.  This is no doubt due to the drugs performing their job function.  Cristy asked the doctors what to expect with continued chemo treatment for this round and was again given assurances that his blood counts would be monitored and the intent is not to zero him out during this phase.
     Our physical therapy work is progressing nicely.  Evan is starting to get more comfortable and he's even taking initiative on his own to put in work.  He's generally not fighting us on walking and that makes it a bit easier on all of us.  I figure this week we'll start trying to phase out his walker as much as possible and see if there is any unassisted exercise that we can put in.

Evan's wish list, which we'll work on next year.

     Life at home is busy.  Between administering drugs, doing school work, physical therapy, naps and entertainment our work is cut out for us.  That doesn't even take into account finding ways to stimulate Nolan and continue his maturation.  The family and I are heading out today to shake off some of this cabin fever.  Let's hope that my confidence in his immune system is not misguided and that he's able to fight off any bacteria that we should encounter.

Sharing a laugh.