The countdown begins...

At Children's hospital, the doctors rotate every 2 weeks. What it means that we get to meet a new team of attending doctors, fellows and residents every 2 weeks. We met Dr. Parks and her team the first 2 weeks we were here. Next we had Dr. Matthews and her team. Yesterday, Dr. Jim Olsen and his team started. I don't wish to see another team this visit. And the doctors also agree. They have had enough of us :-)

The first step the team of doctors took was to stop all his antibiotics! Yes, he is now officially off antibiotics. And he seems to be doing just fine. The next step was to stop his morphine drip. But there is a caveat. Since he has been on morphine for almost a month now, he is almost addicted to it. And we saw it first hand last night. The doctors have prescribed an oral pain killer to be given on a regular basis till his body gets used to being without morphine. We are still going slow on his feed increase. He still vomits few times a day and we just do not want to risk going fast and him slipping back a day.

Yesterday, Shivam freaked out in the playroom. He made Urmila and Bapu run around him for an hour and then came back to the room for some more meds. Then he wanted me to join them. We had a good time again for an hour or so and then he was totally exhausted. Amit and Pallavi stopped by and he fell asleep while they were there. In the evening his port-a-cath got reaccessed (the complete tubing is changed once every week to avoid the risk of infection). Shivam was very happy to see Anjan, Paramita and Aniket in the evening and he played with them. Anjan is the best photographer I have seen (you can see his fabulous work of art at http://anjandas.smugmug.com/) and he never travels anywhere without his super cool bag of camera and lenses. Yesterday, though, Anjan almost felt naked WITHOUT his DSLR. He gave me lengthy explanations on why his point-and-shoot camera is a very worthy to be carried by him. And he went on and on. But in the end, a P&S is a P&S. It's for us normal folks and for kids like Aniket and Shivam. Not for a serious photographer like Anjan.

Well, today seems to have started on a good start. Shivam got up at 4 AM and woke Urmila up. She played with him till 5:30 AM and then I sort of took over. We watched the "Cars" movie a 100th time and then I promised him Bapu, Ma and Meera if he goes to sleep. And then I left for home. Let's hope he lets Urmila have a couple hours of sleep while I came back...

PS: Anjan, I hope you don't mind. You are a very close friend and I hope I have the rights to trouble you like this :-)