Days +33 to +34: Slowly I Grow, Tenth by Tenth

Ezra's neutrophils made it to .5 this morning! They went to .4 yesterday and were at .5 today. We are grateful, excited and relieved, but we aren't ready to celebrate quite yet. Two more things need to happen: 1) the neutrophils need to stay at .5 or above for 3 days and 2) these cells need to be confirmed as donor cells and not Ezra's old cells rearing their ugly head. The doctors are acting very confident that these are donor cells, but they will not know for sure until further testing, which is likely to happen next week. No offense old Ezra cells, but we are SO over you.

Ezra is still struggling with GI issues. Now that his counts are going up, they are taking away a couple of the many antibiotics that he is on. We're hoping that this will help with the nausea, vomiting and pain.

His energy is still awesome when he's not snoozing. His nurse let him stay detached from his pumps for about a half hour during a line change today and he had a blast running around the room uninhibited. Daddy raised the bed up high so he could hang from the end of it like monkey bars - take that Physical Therapy!

He is also enjoying being completely spoiled by the nurses here. For the most part, the nurses here have been fantastic - knowledgeable and caring. Ezra's primary nurse is a nice religious guy from Brooklyn who Ezra calls "a silly guy." He has been known to come in on his days off just to check on Ezra - need we say more? Yesterday, one of our other favorite nurses who Ezra has a crush on, gave him a space shuttle t-shirt and a toy Discovery on top of a 747. Ezra is in heaven. Here he is playing space shuttles with Grandpa in his new favorite shirt and jamming as usual.