Today was another pretty good day. This morning, Jude’s neurosurgeon came in and said that he wanted Jude to have as normal of a day as possible, as if Jude were at home. He did a pretty good job of it. Jude has a scooter that he found in the family lounge that he has enjoyed riding. He was zipping around like crazy. He was only limited by an IV feeding him a saline solution. His mom was trying to keep up with that. Like a little puppy, Jude wanted to outrun his leash.
The toughest thing today was the same, he wanted liquids; water or Gatorade. He was being quite crafty in his requests too, though he also falls back on the old trick of asking to get something for someone else, expecting to be able to share it. The other difficulty is transitioning to oral medication rather than IV. He is taking anti-seizure medication, and will need to take it twice a day for as much as a year.
Another visit from the oncologist this morning gave us a little more reassurance that Jude has the lower grade form of Ependymoma, though we will, of course, be praying that the second opinion agrees. We also got a little clearer picture of what the future holds as a result of what has transpired over the last week. Jude will need a spinal tap, as I mentioned yesterday, as well as possibly another MRI. He will also need to have his hearing and vision screened, just to be sure they haven’t been effected by the tumor or the surgery. The concern isn’t serious, but we will just need to be sure. They also want to make sure he has a cognitive assessment, to be sure that the surgery didn’t do any damage to his brain.
This evening Jude reached another milestone, he was able to have his saline drip removed. The doctor cut his drip in half this morning, and the lab draws he received today showed that his levels are remaining where they need to be. This means two things: first, he will be leaving intensive care and going to a normal room, probably tomorrow; and second, he should be able to start increasing his intake of liquids soon as well, we really hope tomorrow. Given that there has been talk about him possibly going home Monday, it seems to make sense that they should let him start having water tomorrow.
His recovery still finds ways of amazing us. With all of his zipping around on a scooter, walking pretty normally again, reading, playing XBox 360, and finding clever ways to ask for liquids, he seems to be ahead of the curve. We can’t stop thinking about how thankful we are that he is doing so well!