He Went Very Peacefully

At 2:10 am February 25, 2010 Ben Jr. took Jesus's hand and earned his angel wings.

Hello All

It was kind of a rough night. Ben spiked a fever in the middle of his second transfusion, so we had to stop it, he can't swallow anymore so he can't take Tylenol, so the only way to bring his fever down was cold compresses. But after the blood was tested and they checked his blood again we were able to start the transfusion again with a fresh bag, so he has gotten two and a half transfusions so far. They are going to do another transfusion here shortly. He is on morphine for pain and he is unresponsive. Every once in a while he will open his eyes and look around and sometimes answer a question with his eyes or a slight nod. But he appears to be resting comfortably.

Thank you for all the sweet messages, and support, we really appreciate it.

Erin

Resting

Ben is resting quietly now. He has had one blood transfusion and one platelet transfusion to try and bring his blood counts back some. They just started another 4 hour transfusion and then he will have more fluids and morphine. The doctors are planning more transfusions for the morning to try and get his counts up.

Ben is still waking up and looking around and answering questions with his eyes but quit trying to speak earlier today.

Hopefully after all of this blood he will come back around a little bit, but we just don't know.

A huge thank you to everyone who has been helping us the last few months and days when it has been really hard. We truly appreciate it.

A little more comfortable

Ben is feeling a little more comfortable. They started him on morphine to relieve some of the pain and now they have started him on blood and platelet transfusions. His counts are extremely low so it will be a slow process with multiple transfusions of both. This will hopefully help his body carry the oxygen that he is getting.

Change of Location

We decided to move Ben to Children's hospital early this morning. We were having an extremely difficult time keeping him comfortable over night. When we got ready to move him we found that he had hemoraged out of nose because of his low platelets, and his port was not functioning properly.

We got him into the last available room on 4west. That Dr. Velez has got some pull when she makes a phone call at 7am. They were waiting for us to get here. They have already fixed the port and we are now waiting on morphine to make him a little more comfortable.

We will try to update again later in the day.

Long Evening

Ben is now resting as comfortably as he can. His blood work came back not too good from the lab so the on call oncologist wanted us to bring him in to Children's this evening to give him a transfusion. That would be a difficult process because he would have to be admitted through the ER. Ben's doctor found out the exact numbers on the labs and thinks it will be better if we try to bring him to the oncology clinic tomorrow where they have there own infusion room and they can set it up for us ahead of time and get in and out as quickly as possible (8 hours). Erin and I have not decided if we even want to try and do that. Just moving him around in the bed gets his heart rate racing and makes him short of breath even on the oxygen

We are hoping for a quiet uneventful night tonight and maybe he will rebound some in the morning once he is done with this IV fluid infusion. Dr. Velez says she is going to make a house call and come see him sometime tomorrow.

Afternoon

The doctors have called the home health nurses back in now. They will access his port again to draw blood, make giving him fluids easier, and giving him any necessary medication easier. We think he will begin needing pain medication soon.