Day 2: Lazy Recovery Day

Yesterday was a big day for Cristian, and his body needs a rest. Today was intentionally a lazy day with only meds.

Following yesterday’s events Cristian was a bit resistant to any requests for checking him. Whether from the Doctors, or us parents, things took more convincing and patience today than previously. We are working to make sure that we are giving him extra love and understanding.

The physical therapist stopped by to check how he was doing. Following the procedures he had it is not uncommon for children to have standing and walking issues briefly. Cristian did display some of these issue, but as mentioned above it could have just been him resisting any external requests. The physical therapist is planning to stop in the rest of our stay and make sure Cristian is able to stand and walk without issue, so we will try again tomorrow.

We are continuing to monitor his temperature to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. We SOOO want to go home with him on Monday and get him back to the comforts of his own house. Luckily things have stayed normal without even a low grade fever.

Swelling also went down today as the anesthesia works it way out is his system and he spends more time upright. He is also getting rid of fluids effectively which means his liver is working correctly. He is on a lot of extra fluids via IV to make sure this doesn’t become a problem, all signs are good so far.

In addition to the swelling improving, we also got an update that his white blood cells have gone down which is a good thing! When we initially took him to the ER, his white blood cell count was 40k (normal is 5k) but this mornings blood test came back at 20k! This big reduction is a super positive sign and one of the big things that we will be monitoring during this process.

After his nap Cristian was a bit grouchy (who can blame him) but after a little bit of food he was up playing around. It was really great to see him having fun with the toys we brought him and the gifts he has received from the hospital. He was up walking around, talking, generally acting like the little boy we are used to seeing.

Today also had a lot of meds, which for the near term future will be the new normal. Taking meds is new to him in general and having so many to take has been a challenge. Thankfully he is getting more accustomed to the process and fighting less. We hope this trend continues…

We are expecting tomorrow to be like today, no major activities and continued recovery from his operations. We are very hopeful that Cristian won’t develop a fever and that we will be able to come home on Monday!