Finally! I was able to get to the hospital early enough to catch the doctor making his rounds. He said Eli is responding well to everything. We're just waiting for his counts to drop and come back up. Of course Eli asked him how many more days did he have to be in here and the doctor just kinda smiled. I told Eli to stop trying to back Dr. B into a corner on when he could get out, just rest and get better.

Elijah has now decided he wants to ride his bike twice a day and I brought him some handweights to work with too. Yesterday was a good day for him because he got to see the boys. It was Evan's 8th birthday so I decided to surprise Eli by bringing the boys and my dad to the hospital so he could see their faces. Evan had commented last week, when Elijah's transplant was originally scheduled for 2/27, that even though we'd be postponing a birthday celebration with his friends at least he'd get to spend time with his dad. So when the schedule changed and I knew Eli would already be hospitalized on Evan's b'day I wanted to make sure they got see each other. Since Eli's number hadn't started dropping the nurses said it was okay.

The next few days will start to get a little rough. But the sooner that happens the sooner we can begin getting him back on his feet.

Let me run. I'll be back in a few days!

Thank you again for your prayers and help!

Kimberly

Hi everyone. I'm typing this update from Eli's hospital room. He just completed receiving his last bag of stem cells. The transplant part is now over and we just have to pray that he recovers quickly. The first day was rough because the chemo they gave him really upset his stomach and he couldn't keep food down. Once they gave him the correct medication he was able to resume eating regular meals. He's been sleeping alot which is good because it makes the time go by faster. He's also been riding the bike that is in his room the past couple of days. So far everything is moving along rather smoothly. Now that he has been given his stem cells back his immune system will bottom out then recover. This process will hopefully put his myeloma in complete remission. The next couple of days may be a little rough on him, but he'll slowly recover and then be discharged from the hospital. My dad will be here on Sunday to help and we are all looking forward to seeing him.

Today we had two different nurses come in telling us about other transplant patients on this floor. One is a 6 week old baby that was born with no immune system and the others were a set of twins 4-year old who received stem cells from other donors. I figure that if these kids can handle this procedure Big Eli should be able to handle it like a champ. He's fighting! I'm not going to keep you too long. I'll be updating soon.
Thanks again for all of your prayers and positive thoughts!

Kimberly

Well I can at least say the doctor wasn't lying when he said fighting this disease is going to be a long battle. As soon as we think everything is running smoothly, we hit a bump in the road. Elijah has been running a fever the past couple of days and the doctor suspects that it is interfering with the number of stem cells they're able to collect. We are just asking that everyone pray for his fever to cease so that the doctor can collect the millions of cells he'd like to have for Elijah's future procedure. We also would like to thank our Wildcat family for giving us giftcards, flowers, balloons, and cards. We received everything and it's so appreciated. It's sometimes hard for me to respond quickly, so forgive me. Elijah is in good spirits. Of course he was hoping that this collection procedure would go more smoothly so he'd have time to rest before his actual transplant at the end of the month, but he knows that it's just a matter of time before he's back on his feet. I'm keeping this brief today. Sooooo goodnight folks. Just please pray for his stem cells to continue to multiply and then come on out so that they can be collected and stored. Thank you! Kimberly