February 24, 2012

Outside Temp: 27 F (no more snow, yet...)

What I cooked today:
Lentil Soup:  It's a Friday during Lent, which means no meat.  Patrick has been asking for soup, so I made up a soup with my chicken broth and some beans.  It amazing how easy it is, and good.  We used a few garbanzo beans, yellow split peas and some lentils.  Added to the onions, celery and carrots, it was great.  And, we had no leftovers, which is good since it means I don't have to find a Tupperware bowl to put it in!

Update:
First and foremost, GO WOLVERINES!  Our boys basketball teams won both games today, which puts them in 3rd place for the division.  If Highwood looses the game that is going on right now (it should be over by 10:30ish), we can play them to challenge for 2nd place.  Woo Hoo!

Patrick finds it hysterical that I'm so excited about the basketball games.  Since I had too much to do today, I couldn't actually attend either the game at 12:30 or the one at 7:00.  But I could listen on the radio!  It's amazing how I can actually follow the game on the radio. Prior to coming up here, I never even watched a basketball game (except the one Lakers game we got tickets through the hospital).  I couldn't even tell you how many players were on the court or how much each basket was worth. 

But tonight, listening to the game at home, I was pacing around the house, calling out cheers for our boys, booing when the ref called a bad play, and running into the bedroom to tell Patrick each play.  After the 9th time I came in to update him, explaining that we were still ahead by 5, but it was about time our coach called a timeout, since we'd lost about 7 points in the last minute, he just dissolved into laughter.  I know, I have absolutely no idea how to coach the team, and our coach is doing an awesome job, but, but, but...

Okay, enough basketball...

Today, I brought Ryan into clinic.  After getting his labs drawn, we went to lunch, where he asked for chicken strips.  Ryan actually asked for something to eat.  I was stunned.  But I went ahead and ordered him chicken strips (I had the fish, since, again, Lent so no meat.  But Ryan is exempt, I'm sure).  He actually ate about half of a chicken strip before he started to complain that his tummy hurt.  Uh, duh, his tummy can only hold about 5 bites of food.  But hopefully, the more he eats, the bigger his tummy will get!

After lunch, he started acting tired and a little cranky.  By the time we got to clinic, he was shivering and still complaining about the cold.  In clinic, our doc told us that his labs were awesome.  Not tolerable, not good, but awesome.  His platelets were stable and his electrolytes were totally normal.  Even his white blood count was in the 4s, which is totally normal for him.  So, we figure that his ucky feeling was probably related to a bug or virus, not a line infection.  He had a low grade fever (around 99-100), and just fell asleep in the doctors office.  We went ahead and drew blood cultures, just in case, then gave him a dose of Tylenol.

Our doc asked that we stick around in town for another hour or so (which worked since I had to get my shopping done), and give him a call before we headed home.  After clinic, he laid in the cart while I shopped, then fell asleep in the car on the way home.  His fever seemed to go away, and he didn't show any other bad signs.

He slept about 2 hours after we got home, then perked right up and watched his movies. I didn't ask him to join us for dinner, but he seems to be doing okay right now.

The big test will be the two hours after we hook him up to his TPN tonight (we just hooked him up, so I have to watch him for the next 2 hours or so).  If he stays good with no fevers, we can just write it off to a standard virus.  Otherwise, we'll either bring him in or wait to see how the cultures end up.

The good news is that he gained another 1 1/2 pounds!  He's around 58 lbs now, which is totally awesome.  He's gained about 7 pounds in the 6 months since we got up here!  For him, that's great!