DAY -8, May 9th

Today was a GREAT day!  We were able to start at 11am today and found out that our treatment would only last 2 hours. 

The effects of Ativan still had not left Connor and he woke up Mr. Grumpy.  The first question out of his mouth was "when are we going home?"  We got to the stem cell unit and my shy Connor started to tell all the nurses how much he HATES this hospital and everyone in it.  He told everyone that came into our room that he hates it here and he wants to go home in his toughest pouty voice.  He asked for a sledge hammer so that he can break the hospital down and now his anger is directed to the person who built the hospital and that the person who made it must be a terrible person for making kids suffer and that he is not grateful at all and will never be grateful.  Then it got ugly and he directed his anger at himself and said "i hate myself" and I wish I was never born.  We then had to have a serious discussion about why he was here and that even though he doesn't feel sick, his body is really sick. And that without the hospital and the wonderful nurses that people like Andrew would not be here.  This quieted him down.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

We were able to enjoy our day and go visit with my cousin Seong and his cousin Caden and new baby Ryan.  He was able to enjoy ice cream and even go to the park for a bit.  He was very happy to be out and about and he just LOVED holding Ryan.  He was helping me feed him and had Ryan on his lap and was just sitting there for a while and I asked him if he was bored? He said yes it is a little boring but that he liked it and he sat there for another 5 minutes just rocking back and forth with the baby and then said "OK, this is now really boring, you can have him back :)"

We came back to Kohl's house and we were surprised with free make your own pizza kit from Homemade Pizza Company (how nice is that?) and we saw our friend Andrew and Joe.  Andrew was sweet enough (Andrew had a very rough day with round 4 of radiation) to play x-box with Connor for a good 20 minutes while the parents ate some pizza downstairs. Connor was so happy to be independent and to have someone else to play with.  Connor finally came downstairs again by himself and said that Andrew was tired and went to his room and that he would like to make his own pizza now. So he had his second dinner with some pears and ice cream at 9pm and was in a wonderful mood.  ( Andrew had to go to the ER last night b/c he had chills and was just feeling terrible so please say some prayers for him, he still has 4 more rounds of radiation followed by 4 days of intense chemo). 

After his second dinner- we had to wrap up his PICC line and he had to take his shower (very important to shower every day due to all of the chemo) and we played X-box and read some books. He mentioned home once that night but said that the X-box made it fun for him and he didn't even think about crying.  We are making some real progress here:)