You're Coming Through Good and Loud

It's just Jayne and I hanging out, right now.  I spent the last half hour holding him and reading Lord of the Rings to him.  I had promised myself that it would be the first book I read to him when he got a bit older.  There's no time like the present, so they say.  Of course, they have been known to say a lot of superfluous things, so I don't put much stock in anonymous theys with too much time on their hands, saying whatever comes into their brain at any given moment.  After about fifteen minutes of reading and snuggling, he fell asleep.  He just missed his eye drops and antibiotic, but he's been sleeping so irregularly that we all agreed that that took priority.  We've had a slew of doctors in and out, meeting him, introducing themselves to us.  Every one of them who walks away remarks just how adorable he is.

Along with his sleep, his appetite has become just as irregular.  It's unique, now, for him to feed for longer than ten minutes and that ten minutes is interrupted by coy smiles, occasional biting, and grabbing the shield and flinging it away.  As was to be expected, the chemo is starting to rear it's ugly visage.  We've been using anti-nausea and a saline drip to try and counteract what's been presenting itself so for, but we think we may need to try a bit more to truly mask the effects of his injections.  If this persists, we'll probably start to give him a Benadryl injection every six hours, offset from his current anti-nausea.  If it comes to that, it may help him sleep as well as eat more, both key components to a healthy, albeit fighting an aggressive cancer of the blood, baby.

And still, he's just tearing through it as best he can.  He has his moments and I don't delude myself with visions of my son maintaining the same, cheerful temperament for the next months of sustained treatment and recovery.  But, today, he's laughing and playing, so that's something.  Even if tomorrow comes and finds him with an upset stomach, patches of hair missing, and a pain that no one can really understand or assuage, my son will still, always, be just that.  Everything he's going through, Shay and I feel it in a way.  It twists our stomachs into knots, sends our minds adrift in a sea of doubt and uncertainty, and causes our hearts to break, ever so slightly, every time he cries, spits up, or has to go through some other form of discomfort to restore his body to it's original hale state.

He thanks you for joining him on this journey.  At least I'm fairly certain that that is what two spit bubbles follow by a raspberry mean.  I thank you as well, I thank you for helping Shay and I maintain our sanity, what there was to begin with.