Day +29: Bright Future (;

Except the "finish line" to go home soon is near! Hehehe!

No fevers still, so far! He's past the 48-hour mark to watch for fevers now! Whoop whoop!

Now we get to think about and try and get ready to go home sometime soon! I was thinking that Kal would be able to be discharged tomorrow (Friday), since that was the big thing keeping him from going home. After speaking with the BMT doctors, they noted that they'd like to try watch some things before they will discharge him. That pushes back the tentative date of discharge a little further, BUT, on the bright side, they said they now can say they are trying for a specific day, which would be hopefully Monday or Tuesday! It may not be what I had guessed, but having an actual day laid out by the doctors makes it feel all the more real. It's coming right around the corner! At the same time, it's hard to wrap my head around the thought that we'll be home- like home, HOME- very soon.

Smiles from Mr. Chunks, anyone?

Together with the Infectious Disease team, the BMT team has laid out a few things they are wanting to watch over the weekend. First, he needs to have no more fevers (duh!). Second, they reduced his current 2 antibiotics and 2 antifungals to 1 antibiotic and 2 antifungals. They are also considering dropping one type of antifungnal as well. They need to watch him and make sure he does ok and shows no new signs of infection from doing so. Third, he needs to prove he can keep his platelet counts up enough to only need platelet transfusions in-clinic. Finally, he needs to prove he can keep his ANC (neutrophil) levels high enough, and keep increasing in numbers. Over the past few days, those numbers have dropped down to 800. They were much higher before. But, the doctors said that is normal for the counts to go up and down. They just need to make sure after this, his counts will start to bounce back up again. If his numbers go down to below 500 (which is not really common), they will simply give him a medicine that will stimulate those neutrophils to start reproducing a lot more.

As a side note, the main doctor from Infectious Disease is determined Kal is going to be big and strong, and grow up to look like Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones. Call me a dork if you want, but I had never even heard of him, so when the doctor showed me a picture of him, I cracked up! It totally made my day. (But, if he tries to grow a beard like that, this Mama will shave it straight off, that's for sure! When you can make pom-poms with your beard... it's got to go. Hahaha).

What do you think, guys? Will he look like this Khal?

Or, do you think he'll look like this Kal? Bahahaha.

 Either way, he's our strong little warrior AND superman! (;

Other than that, today was pretty chill. Kal had his moments where he became very upset, of course, especially when he threw up twice today, with one of those times also throwing up the end of his NG feeding tube. Yikes-er-yuck. Good thing it happened while the nurse was there in the room so he could tell me that's normal and then he was able to put it back in place. It still gives me the shivers thinking about it, though. He also got a blood transfusion, and barely hung on to his platelet levels enough today to not need a platelet transfusion as well.

As for now, we pray with gratitude that we can go home soon, and then just sit around and wait some more, until OUR discharge day comes!