Quick Update

Hi Everyone!

Eric continues to do well with gaining his strength back. He's still having a bit of trouble sitting and standing, only now his limiting factor is dizziness, not necessarily weakness. This dizziness is expected, since he was laying down for so long. When this happens, the pressure sensors in your carotid arteries do not respond as well as they used to, and do not regulate the blood pressure to your brain as well. This will resolve in time.

Eric still has the feeding tube through his nose and is trying at all costs to get it taken out. Before this can happen, he has to prove that he can eat all the calories they want him to in order to stop losing weight. In fact, they really want him to gain weight, so Eric is trying to target all the high calorie items he can. :) I told him to enjoy this while he can, because doctors won't tell him to do this forever! Yesterday, the speech therapist opened up his diet to basically any kind of food, as long as there were no thin liquids (He's still having trouble swallowing really thin liquids like water). So today I promised to pick up beef brisket from South Street Smokehouse (one of his FAVORITES), so I think he is pretty excited.

We have Eric's first follow-up with the hematologist on Thursday, which means Eric gets to take another ambulance ride down to Indy and back. :) It'll be interesting to see what he has to say. I'm hoping to get a more definite plan for the rest of Eric's treatment (the maintenance chemo, more ATRA, etc). This will also be the first time Eric meets his hematologist. This is the one that did not have the best bedside manner, and it'll be interesting to see if that changes at all now that Eric is no longer in the ICU. Hopefully, the doctor won't be quite as pessimistic. I'll be sure to write what we find out from that visit.

Until later!
Love,
Melissa