Days +37 to +40: Breaking Out...

Into the hallway, that is. With his counts on the up, the doctors encouraged Ezra to start walking the halls at night when there are less people around, provided he is covered with isolation gear. It took Ezra's germophobic parents a day or so to get used to the idea and it took Ezra a day to get comfortable with leaving the room that has been his world for the past 7 weeks, and then we were off.  Right away, Ezra was zipping around the halls while we hustled to keep up.  The fabulous Jessica from Child Life made this awesome space shuttle and hung it on the wall in the hall so that Ezra would have a surprise to motivate him to keep walking.  We are now doing nightly outings.

On the cell front, we had a bit of a set back when Ezra's neutrophil counts dropped enough to cause concern, but thankfully, he is now back on track and the numbers are slowly increasing again. The chimerism tests (the tests that look at whether the cells are donor or Ezra) have been sent and results will be available next week. Please keep thinking and praying that these tests show that the new cells are donor cells. We will keep everyone posted on the results.