—

Bennett and Hamilton – Christmas 2001 and 2000

The Purpose of Christmas

Just a few days before Christmas
Once prayers had been heard,
The people were scurrying
To get out God’s Word.The hymns were being sung
To Holy God above,
In thanks for Him sending,
Jesus Christ and His love.

Christmas brings remembrance
Of family and friends,
And the importance of our sharing
A love without end.

Our blessings are too numerous,
Our hearts filled with joy,
Yet our eyes have often drifted
Away from our Lord!

The Christmas season brings forth
The best in most souls,
To help those less fortunate
And lighten their load.

Salvation was offered
For all to receive,
If only each person
Would listen, heed and believe.

So if you don’t know Him
Down deep in your heart,
Ask Him to save you now
You’ll be changed and have a new start.

7:00 a.m. We have some good news! Just don’t know if it is great news yet! Bennett’s ANC went from 76 to 186! White blood count went from 1.9 to 2.1. Neutrophils are still 8 – not so good but he has 10 monocyctes which yesterday they were just 2. The monocyctes is what they need to see to make the neutrophils higher. We are not sure if this ANC is high enough to be discharged. The concern is because his neutrophils are the same and the white blood count has fluctuated the last couple of days. We will wait for the Dr. to do rounds to see what he says. Thank you God, we are praising your name!

The other good news is that his other counts came up, hemoglobin from 7.5 to 8.0 and platelets from 43 to 74. No transfusion needed now.

10:30 a.m. We are coming home! The Dr. today is the same Dr. that was on call Monday night when I called and brought Bennett in. The nurses are in shock, they can’t believe it! They said this is very rare for a patient to be discharged with their counts so low. It is kinda scary and we will have to be very careful! We are thanking God for this blessing! All of our prayers together were answered!

The Dr. wants him to go home taking an antibiotic which I am glad about. It will take awhile to get all the paperwork and everything finalized but we both will be so happy to sleep in a real bed tonight!

5:30 p.m. Bennett and I got home at 1:30. The Dr. wanted him to have one more antibiotic by iv and we had to say bye to all the nurses. Bennett is doing good. He is asleep right now. He played basketball outside with Hamilton and they played xbox together. Bennett gave Hamilton his new remote control car so Hamilton went and got something in his room to give Bennett. This is what family and Christmas is all about.

I am a little nervous about being home in a way. After un-packing, I have sanitized everything I can think that Bennett might touch. I’m not afraid that I can’t make the right decision and take care of Bennett. I’m afraid he may get sick (run a temp) on Christmas Eve or Christmas. Please continue to pray that Bennett’s counts continue to go up and that he doesn’t get a fever.

He probably feels good enough to get out and do something but we just can’t chance it. It will be a different Christmas, it already has been. But I know four people that love each other very much and will make the best of it!

8:15 a.m.  Bennett’s white blood cell count went down from 2.5 to 1.9 today.  We are waiting to hear what the neutrophils are to know his ANC.  His hemoglobin went down from 8.3 to 7.5.  He may need a transfusion.  Platelets went from 46 to 43. 

 I asked the resident Dr. if we didn’t see an increase in his ANC by Christmas if we could still go home.  I plead my case of why he would be safer at home.  That this is also a mental challenge not just a physical one.  Yesterday we went to the gift shop and on the elevator is all these people we don’t know. He wore a mask but still.  He hasn’t spiked a temp since Tuesday.  Cultures are negative and the temp was more than likely caused from an ear infection.  And I promised that I would watch/take care of him, duh?  Well, you would be surprised of some parents that don’t even come or stay with their kids. She said she would talk to the attending Dr. in rounds and let me know.

Please say extra prayers that Bennett’s counts will go up instead of going down.  I know he will be so disappointed if we have to stay.  He is so bored.

9:00 a.m.  Bennett’s neutrophils went from 9 to 8. With the lower white blood count, this makes his ANC 76.  Yes, seventy six. It went from 225 to 76.    I pray/plead to God that Bennett’s bone marrow would make more good cells quickly and help us keep a positive attitude!  

11:00 a.m. Bennett was woke up this morning by Santa. Ho! Ho! Ho!  Last night there was Christmas carolers that sang at the nurses station.  It doesn’t feel much like Christmas though but we have to be thankful that Bennett isn’t any worse.   Our friend, Jessica is at home and her parents are praying that Jessica makes it to see Christmas. Praying for God’s miracles and thanking him for his blessings.

3:00 p.m. The attending Dr. just came in to talk to Bennett and I.  He said that he was sorry and knew that it was the Friday before Christmas but since Bennett has very few white blood cells to fight off anything and since he had a fever; he needed to stay in the hospital because he could get very sick quickly.  That even with an antibiotic he needed more white blood cells to fight off of his own body’s infection. This Dr. will be back Monday. We will have one of the main oncology/hematology Dr’s this weekend. 

8:00 p.m.  Bennett had a pretty good day considering.  He played with a remote control car that Santa brought him and played target shooting with his roommate Nathan.  Bennett and I went down to the 5th floor where the Ronald McDonald House has a family room with a kitchen.  We fixed a frozen pizza, it was really good.  It was really nice to get out of the room.  His next CBC will be in the morning.  Oh, are we praying many times a day that his ANC goes up!

Thank all for your support with your comments,  love and prayers!

If you are traveling this weekend for Christmas , be careful and we will pray for your safe travel.    

11:00 p.m.  Bennett and I had a surprise this evening!  Sid walked into our room and brought Bennett pickled cucumbers/okra,  a gyro and a few things from home.  What a nice way to end the evening!  I love you Sid! 

8:30 a.m. Bennett is about the same.  He has been unhooked from his iv fluids since yesterday afternoon.  He feels free not being connected to an iv pole.

We had a fun evening, playing the board game, Sorry. We forgot of how much fun that game is. 

We are just hanging out waiting to hear what his ANC is. Actually Bennett is still sleeping.  His hemoglobin was 8.3, platelets 46.  His white blood cells were 2.5 from 1.6. This is Awesome!  If his neutrophils went up too than he will have a higher ANC! 

10:30 a.m. Well I had that feeling and you don’t start packing until you know for sure. Bennett’s neutrophils went down from 18 to 9 which means his ANC went from 288 to 225.  We are not coming home. Very disappointing but maybe he needs another day of antibiotics to make sure the ear and throat problem is gone. We don’t want to have to come back. The scariest thing is to think that he may really get a high fever quick and have to take a helicopter ride to the hospital.

We have met a really cool family that is Bennett’s roommate. The boy is age 8 and has ALL too. Please pray for Nathan’s healing.  The rooms are all full on 9west.  Our wish is that all the kids get to go home for Christmas and our healed.

6:30 p.m.  Nothing new.  Bennett feels good, No fevers, eating a little.  It is kinda weird that he is in the hospital and feels pretty good.  He has felt a lot worse at home many times. We tried to keep busy this afternoon, we walked around the hospital and played board games.  The cultures they took Monday evening came back negative.  He is off the iv fluids and is getting the iv antibiotic every 8 hours.  He will have another CBC test in the morning.

Thank you for your prayers that his counts go up and no fevers so we can come home tomorrow.   

8:00 a.m.  Bennett has not ran a fever.  He had a CBC test early and we are still waiting to get back the diffs to know what his ANC is.  His hemoglobin dropped from 7.9 to 6.5. He will be getting a red blood cell transfusion today.  His platelets dropped too from 47 to 26. They normally don’t transfuse platelets unless they are closer to 10. The Dr. did say that they might go ahead with a platelet transfusion too before he goes home since they are dropping and we live farther away. We haven’t heard if today is the day to go home yet.  

1:45 p.m.  Bennett’s ANC is 288 dropping from 540 Monday night.  Not good.  This means that he has to stay at the hospital until they see that the ANC is going up.  Bennett’s transfusion of red blood cells (hemoglobin)  just got done a few minutes ago.  So far, no re-action or issues with that.

He ate a pretty good lunch.  I walked to Applebee’s/brought it back and he really enjoyed the appetizer sampler.

He mentioned that his ear felt funny/discomfort.  The fellow Dr. looked at it and said it is really really red. She said it looked like it really hurt.  She indicated this probably was the cause for the temp and the antibiotic that he has been getting should make it better.

Of course he will not have chemotherapy tomorrow now. He won’t be able to continue treatment until ANC is above 750 and platelets are above 50. 

Bennett and I had talked about bringing gifts to all the 9west patients when we came to clinic tomorrow for Christmas. We never thought that he would be the one in the hospital.  Please pray that he will get better and his ANC will go up soon.

It is really a surprise that his counts have dropped so much.  In the past, with the chemotherapy that he has been getting the last few weeks, it hadn’t affected his counts.  He has had more transfusions in the last month than he has had almost the entire time.  The only thing I can think of to explain this is; that his body has seen so much chemo and is killing all of his good cells.  In the big picture, this is good news. Hopefully if the chemo is killing his good cells that it is killing all of the leukemia cells as well.   

5:30 p.m.  Bennett is feeling pretty good.  His throat is still sore and his ear is still uncomfortable.  The Dr. indicated that the meropenem antibiotic he is getting is strong and will get rid of any type of infection.  He had a couple visitors this afternoon which really raised his spirits and passed away the time.  We just have to be careful that he isn’t around anyone that is sick.

We hope some good Christmas TV shows are on tonight. We watched Snowglobe last night.  I missed Hamilton’s school Christmas program today.  This always gets me in the Christmas mood listening to all the Christmas songs. Hamilton sent me this pic before school via gpa cell phone.   He just got his curls caught off yesterday.   I miss and love you Hamilton! 

—

6:30 a.m.  Bennett was admitted to the St Louis Children’s Hospital around 1:30 a.m.  His fever gradually went up yesterday afternoon and by 6:30 p.m., it was 101.2.  It stayed at 101 for 45 min. before I called the Dr. on call.  He told us to come in to the cares unit so we arrived at 9:30 p.m.  The cares unit is opened after the clinic closes at 5:00 and stays open until 11:00, his Dr. has to call and register him. Just another option instead of the emergency room. The drive here was horrible, lots of icy fog.

His fever stayed around 100.8.  They did a chest x-ray that came back normal.  They also did cultures to see if he has any infection.  It will take 48 hours for the final test to come back so he will have to stay admitted until than.  They did another CBC blood test and the results varied somewhat. His ANC was 575, hemoglobin 7.9, and platelets 46.  The Dr. said the variation just might be from different machines. 

They started him on a antibiotic, through iv that he will get every 8 hours.  Actually in the cares unit, they gave him the same one he had last time and got a rash.  We told the nurse  that he broke out but Bennett and I couldn’t remember the name of the antibiotic.  I asked the nurse in the cares unit if she knew. I guess she couldn’t check in the system and gave to him anyway.  So far, he didn’t get a rash that we are aware of.  When we got to 9 west, they knew it was the same one that he got a rash from before (cefepime) so they have already changed it.

I think Bennett finally was able to go to bed around 2:30.  They will do another CBC this morning.  One good thing for us is that we are on 9 west but do have a roommate. It sure makes a difference in his care and we know several nurses that makes it easier.

We are thankful that maybe this was caught earlier and isn’t anything but the virus that his pediatrician said.  Because of his ANC being low, they sure don’t take fevers lightly.  They want to make sure that he doesn’t have a line infection from his port or any fungal infection that could quickly grow on his lungs.

Also, we are thankful that this happened early in the week and he has 6 days to get better before Christmas.

10:00 a.m.  Bennett had a fever of 100.8 at 8:30. He took Tylenol and he felt like his fever broke as he sweat-ed quite a bit.  He ate some cereal for breakfast.  The Dr. decided not to do another CBC this morning since it was just a few hours ago since he had one in the cares unit. They will do one in the morning.

4:00 p.m  So far Bennett hasn’t had any more fever.  He only ate a few bites for lunch. The attending Dr. came in about an hour ago and stated that Bennett might get to go home tomorrow IF no fever, ANC above 500 and other counts are good, and blood culture comes back negative.  We’re hoping for all of the above.  We will wait to see if his counts are high enough for chemo treatment on Thursday.

9:30 p.m. The nurse just took Bennett’s temp and it is 100.1. It is low grade which they don’t really count but if it goes up to 101 than they will do another blood culture and probably change his antibiotic plus would keep him admitted.  Praying that the temp stays away if there is no infection. 

Bennett indicated today that he doesn’t feel as bad as the last time he was admitted at the end of October which is good.    

1:30 p.m. Bennett woke up feeling lousy. He didn’t feel up to going to school and said his throat hurt. He looked really pale, is weak and tired. He also had a severe headache.  Hamilton and I got ready to leave and I decided to check Bennett’s temperature. It was 99.8. This isn’t even considered a temp by the St Louis Dr.’s but I knew that it just needed to go up 1.2 more degrees before we would be making a trip to the hospital and automatically hospitalized for 2 days with cultures ran.

I called his nurse in St Louis and she wanted us to get a CBC to check his counts at our local hospital. (thinking his hemoglobin might be low) because he has been pretty tired. His hemoglobin had gone down from 9.1 to 8.5 but not low enough for a transfusion. His platelets were 57. The biggest shock was his ANC has dropped from 1,056 to 540. Anything below 1,000 is a slight chance of infection and anything below 500 is a severe chance of infection. Now, we are back to really really watching who he is around and being extremely careful. (No kissing girls under the mistletoe, hanging out in crowded areas, and no school)

His nurse suggested taking him to his pediatrician and asking him to do a throat culture to make sure he doesn’t have strep. This came back negative. His Dr. said that his throat was red but wasn’t too bad. That he may just have a virus.

Now, it is wait and see. I was hoping it was something we could get an antibiotic for and get rid of it before Christmas. I have this fear that he will get a fever and being admitted over the holiday.

We will go to our local hospital on Wednesday to check counts again. They need to go up before he can get treatment on Thursday. His platelets must be 50 or greater and his ANC has to be 750 or greater.

Your prayers, comments, thoughts, and love are inspiring!

9 days till Christmas!

Here are a few pic’s I found of Bennett when he was 2 years old at Christmas in 1996.

–––

Bennett – age 2 Christmas 1996

Bennett has been really tired today. He didn’t think he was going to make it through Sunday school and church. He couldn’t wait to get home and go to bed. He did just that. He didn’t eat lunch and went to bed and slept for about 5 hours. He got up and ate a little bit. He said he feels like he might be getting sick. He did some homework and played Xbox with Hamilton.

I sure hope he isn’t coming down with something. We go Wednesday for a blood test at our local hospital to check counts. If counts are good, we will go to St Louis on Thursday. He will have a spinal tap with chemo injected and iv push of vincristine and methotrexate. Praying that his counts are adequate so he can receive chemo. If they are not, all chemo will be stopped until his counts recover.

“This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 1:18

10 days before Christmas!

Bennett is doing pretty good. He got home late last night and slept in this morning. He had a headache and felt nauseated late this morning when he got up.

He went to the girls ballgame this afternoon at Rend Lake College and went to a friends house this evening.

The Boneyard Boccie Ball Club had their Christmas party this evening and Santa came! It was a great time!

Below is a pic from last year of Bennett and Hamilton with Santa at the Boccie.

And a couple pic’s of Hamilton with his friends tonight with Saint Nick.

—–-

—-

Bennett, age 5 and Hamilton, age 2 1/2 months – Christmas 1999

At first, I thought this story was corny as I don’t like artificial or make believe things. But as I read through it and actually read it several times, I have decided to share this with all the mother’s. It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of Christmas but this year I am taking one Christmas carol, one garland, one mistletoe, one shopping spree, one present, one precious moment at a time…..

May you enjoy what this Christmas season is all about – Family and Friends that you love while celebrating the true meaning of Christmas!

If your a Mom, I think you might like this and than………… hug, kiss and say I love you to your precious son or daughter!

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS FOR MOM’S

‘Twas was the night before Christmas, when all through the abode,
only one creature was stirring, and she was cleaning the commode.
The children were finally sleeping, all snug in their beds,
while visions of Nintendo WII and Barbie, flipped through their heads.

The dad was snoring in front of the TV,
with a half-constructed bicycle on his knee.
So only the mom heard the reindeer hooves clatter,
which made her sigh, “Now what’s the matter?”

With toilet bowl brush still clutched in her hand,
she descended the stairs, and saw the old man.
He was covered with ashes and soot, which fell with a shrug.
“Oh great,” muttered the mom, “Now I have to clean the rug.”

“Ho-ho-ho!” cried Santa, “I’m glad you’re awake.”
“Your gift was especially difficult to make.”
“Thanks, Santa, but all I want is some time alone.”
“Exactly!” he chuckled, “I’ve made you a clone.”

“A clone?” she asked, “What good is that?
Run along, Santa, I’ve no time for chit-chat.”

The mother’s twin. Same hair, same eyes,
same double chin. “She’ll cook, she’ll dust, ”
she’ll mop every mess. You’ll relax, take it easy,
watch The Young & the Restless.” “Fantastic!” the mom cheered.
“My dream come true! “I’ll shop. I’ll read., I’ll sleep a whole night through! ”

From the room above, the youngest began to fret.
“Mommy?! I’m scared… and I ‘m wet.”

The clone replied, “I’m coming, sweetheart.”
“Hey,” the mom smiled, “She knows her part.”
The clone changed the small one, and hummed a tune,
as she bundled the child, in a blanket cocoon.

“You’re the best mommy ever. ” I really love you.”
The clone smiled and sighed, “I love you, too.”

The mom frowned and said, “Sorry, Santa, no deal. ”
That’s my child’s love, she’s trying to steal.”

Smiling wisely Santa said, “To me it is clear, ”
Only one loving mother, is needed here.”

The mom kissed her child, and tucked him into bed.
“Thank you, Santa, ” for clearing my head.
I sometimes forget, it won’t be very long,
when they’ll be too old, for my cradle-song.”

The clock on the mantle began to chime.
Santa whispered to the clone, “It works every time.”
With the clone by his side Santa said, “Goodnight.
Merry Christmas, Mom, You’ll be all right.