Day...Ummm....9? Ya that's it!

Day#9… pretty uneventful, Tucker is doing ok. His pain in his head it seems is getting better. Well, better in a way that he can take ½ of his morphine dose and it will hold him all day long. Like today he got morphine at 9am (mornings are his worst time) and here it is 5pm and he hasn’t had another one. That is great! We even got up and he took a shower (seated & with lots of help) but he got up! Ya! He isn’t talking much- just simple statements like yes, no, and just basic words. I think this is more like he knows that he is slurring his words and thinking about what to say is hard for him to do right now, so he just opts to not speak. And that’s fine and all- but sure makes for one sided conversations between us. So I just keep talking and talking.
Yesterday we had Angie come up and visit and she was a big hit because she brought McDonalds with her! That is like Tucker’s food jackpot! Thanks Angie for the visit- its nice to have grown up talk every once and a while.
Today my co-workers and great friends showed up. Shawnleen and Alisha from my HCA came up bearing LOTS of gifts. Holy Cow- they sure spoiled him!! I mean it took like 30 minutes to get through the bags (yes more than one) of stuff! Tons of fun stuff- stuff to color, Slinky's, games, puzzles, candy, more candy, bubbles, toys and much much more. I mean WOW! You guys ROCK! Thanks Jennifer Thornock, they told me you helped out with the spoiling of Tucker. You guys are just too much! They even had a treat for me in there- dryer sheets for the laundry I do up here- you just never really know how important dryer sheets are until they are gone from your life-
If you take a look at the picture I took of Tucker today, the close up of his face, you can start to see the difference that the steroids are making to him. The steroids are responsible for the very round "butter ball" face look. He is just really starting to get the butter ball look right now- I can only imagine what he will look like in 3 more weeks. So keep a close eyes on the pictures and you can watch him change.
The good news is its of course all temporary, and as quickly as 3 to 4 days off of the steroids the side effects will reverse themselves and he'll go back to looking like our normal Tucker.

We have had a few of the therapy animals come up here. Man, they are COOL! These dogs are just something else! They hop up into bed with Tucker and they find his hand and nudge there head under his hand until Tucker gets the point and starts to pet them. This is great work for his coordination skills and the dogs help him as much as possible, of course this could be from the fact that Tucker has a treat in his hand for them…… We got a knock on our door the other day and it was from the Animal Therapy group and they asked us if we wanted to meet Bullet. I said sure bring him on it- and to my surprise Bullet is a cat! I’ve never meet a therapy cat before. I didn’t know there was a cat out there that could have that disposition to go into many strange rooms, with all sorts of different people and kids- with all sorts of reactions, and just- be ok? Have you ever met a cat that could cuddle up on a screaming child and go to sleep? Me neither- not that Tucker was the screaming kid, it was the kid before us apparently. Bullet came out of his crate and walked right up to Tucker’s arm pit and made a circle, and snuggled right up to him and tried to go to sleep. I was shocked! I’ve never ever seen a cat that could do that! I just love the therapy animals, and I know it makes Tucker smile- and perhaps a little home sick to get back to our crazy dogs at home.
Tomorrow Tucker is in for his chemo’s. Instead of doing an “awake sedation” for the spinal tap (that’s where I can be in the room through the whole thing) they are taking him down to the RTU clinic where he is put more deeply “under” in a surgical type way. They said it will be safer this way until they can confirm that Tucker’s brain is getting better. They will give him his spinal tap chemo and get another bone marrow biopsy. Then after he recovers from that we will come back up to our room for our normal chemo. I’m hoping that tomorrow they will give me a hint as to what day we are going to do the next MRI- assuming that his brain looks better- then we can go HOME HOME HOME! My hope is before Friday of this week.
Hope hope hope hope hope……. Home home home home……
Love you all, Amber
PS if anybody does Skype Tucker handle is FunnyTucker10. We haven’t really done it yet… but I’m hoping for this week I can get him up and going on Skype.

Elliot the Portuguese water dog



Bullet the therapy cat

Shawnleen and Alicia HCA family