Crazy Chair Racing {R4, Day 25}

I'm not going to lie.
I was totally bummed to still be in the hospital today, day 25. The day we've gone home twice before.
But you know what? Today I got over it.

One of the doctors said to me: "This is NOT evidence of cancer. It is evidence of beat-up bone marrow."

It just needs time. If they are not worried, I resolve not to worry.
(Tomorrow, they're doing a "manual differential" to let the little automatic blood-counting-gerbils have a day off while a human lab tech manually combs through the neutrophils.)

I look around the unit and I know that there are kids who are NOT doing nearly as well as Sam. I know that all over the world there are kids with cancers of all kinds who are miserably sick. I know this. And so I can wait a few more days...to get it right.


So this was our day....

Sam made everyone on the unit giggle as he realized that rolling chairs make perfect racing vehicles.
(There was a little bit of "shouldn't he be wearing a helmet?")

And he even conned one of our nurse practitioners to race against him.

After her one race, guess who was his favorite opponent? Yep, that's right. Good old mama. Hey, that's a very good workout! Until I slipped off and landed on my tush. But um...I'm okay.

The rest of the day was, again, uneventful. Sam played chess against Bubbie (things I didn't know about my mom - I didn't know she could play chess!) while I slipped off to have a shower and visit the grocery store.

He might be a little bored...or just 6.

self-portraiture by Sam

Today Sam got a great stack of packages, including a pretty amazing one from an artist named Eric Winter. Eric heard about Sam from the ThinkGeek blog (wow) and instead of taking a picture of himself in a superhero t-shirt, he created a superhero just for Sam! I really love that he figured out that Sam loves turtles and swords and incorporated that into the sidekick, too. Sam was pretty excited and donned the Mega Turtle t-shirt right away (as I type this, he is wearing it to bed). Thanks, Eric!

I am constantly awed by the total strangers who have been unbelievably generous to our family, not to mention the countless people that we actually know and love who have been caring and loving. Last night, I lay awake, unable to sleep, mentally composing the words of gratitude that I plan to write when this is all over. I actually considered writing it down, but I couldn't bring myself to "jump the gun" and write the "last" post while we're still here. But let me tell you, I have never been so filled with gratitude in my entire life. This has changed our family forever, but in so many ways, the blessings have had just as much impact, if not more.

So we sit, snugly ensconced in room E583. And we wait.
And knowing that you're all out there, loving us, makes it all a lot easier.
Thank you.