Drain, Drain... Go Away!

Yesterday was a great day, until we got up to take a shower and his incision started leaking again. This means that there is still too much fluid building up behind the incision which is prohibiting it from healing properly, and the stitches just aren't holding it. So last night, Cannon had a lumbar drain placed in his spine, which was very stressful for him.

Despite all of this, he is still in good spirits, eating his bacon, drinking chocolate milk and playing video games. He was really excited today when a box of Mrs. Fields Cookies arrived (which he likes microwaved with a cup of milk).

Another thing that made his day today was a note from the HTS Principal, who said the 5th-8th grades got together to do a project for him. This made him SO happy.... especially when he saw photos of his classmates making a message chain to send to him.

The "chain" is en route to CHOP. We can't wait to see it and decorate his room with it. We are also expecting some visitors! Grace and Clark are on their way with Grandma and Grandpa and he's really excited to see them tonight.

We have our ups and downs each day -- procedures, pokes, prods that don't make anyone happy -- but  then we also have our highlights -- where he is happy to watch movies and have Harry Potter read to him. AND we just found out that we are being moved to a private room (woo hoo!) so good news for now.

As far as how long we will be here, it's hard to say. The drain is there to remove some of the CSF so his incision can heal a bit -- and so they are trying to balance the removal of the fluid with the healing. Once they think the incision has healed enough, they will clamp the drain to see if the incision holds. If it doesn't, we repeat the process. It's not an exact science and it can take a while - so we are guessing at least another week. And hoping that there are no other speed bumps along the way -- so thank you again for your continued thoughts and prayers. More to come tomorrow.