April 8th

Last night for Kaden was a bit rough. He was feeling pretty full (which is common after this surgery) and felt like food and drink was not passing through. The doctor said that he could have times of ileus (where his bowels don't move) from time to time. We think last night was one of those times. The problem with your bowels not moving, is that everything that goes in has to come out somehow. 

He felt pretty backed up and unfortunately threw up a couple of times in the night. After throwing up, he felt much better though, so I guess with every bad thing comes something good. 

This afternoon, we were talking about his hydration and wanting to stay on top of it. We didn't know how much liquid his body actually absorbed before throwing up. 

Luckily, we have the most amazing oncologist here in American Fork. He has an infusion center attached to his office where he does chemotherapy. The doctor was not in the office today but the infusion center was open. Kaden gave them a call on the off chance that they might be able to squeeze him in and give him a bag of fluid. 

We must have called at the right time, because they said if we could come in right away they could squeeze us in. We only live 10 minutes away so we hopped in the car and away we went! 

It took about an hour, but they were able to give Kaden 40 oz of fluid through an IV. This helped to put our mind at ease especially since we are heading into the weekend. We didn't want to end up in the ER just for a bag of fluid. 

Funny story from today at the oncologist office. We were sitting in the waiting room waiting for them to call Kaden back and I was trying to make small talk with him to take his mind off feeling cruddy from the car ride. I showed him peace of my finger that is super sore from where I ripped a hangnail off earlier this week.  I said, "Yeah, it REALLY hurts! It's been hurting all week!" He just looks over at me and in a very kaden-y sarcastic tone said, "I'm so sorry YOU'VE been in SO much pain this week!" I just started cracking up! I love that here I am complaining to a person who just had the "Mother of All Surgeries" about a hang nail!  I also LOVE that he has the sense of humor to call me out on it! We both got a good chuckle out of that one! 

His diet is still pretty light. To give you an idea of what he eats, today he had a piece of white bread, a 1/4 cup of cottage cheese, a piece of cheese, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  (Sounds super filling for an entire day right?!) 🙄 The surgeon said that it is very common for people to lose 15 to 20 lbs with this surgery. We think that he has already lost 10, so we are hoping that things start moving along so he can start taking in more calories. We decided this evening that the name of the game is really quality over quantity at the moment. So we're going to shoot for more soft proteins, and protein drinks for the next little bit. The surgeon said the good news is that even though everyone loses, everyone gains it back. Which is good for Kaden because he didn't have any to lose in the first place! Crazy side note about that, we have to give Kaden a blood thinner shot every morning, which is not a big deal, except for the fact that it has to be injected into fat. We are really struggling to find any fat pockets! He seriously doesn't have one piece of fat on his body! Today when I was putting it in he said it burned and we think it was injected into his muscle! Oops! 😬 The pharmacist warned us that might happen because he is so lean, but it's not a huge deal, we will just try again tomorrow. 

The rest of the afternoon/evening was great! He was able to do 3 more walks which is 3 laps around the cul-de-sac each walk. By the end he is pretty tired so he comes home and pretty much crashes. The doctor told him his schedule needs to be walk, eat, sleep-- repeated all day long. 

To be honest, this healing process is quite the roller coaster. We keep saying how it feels like we take two steps forward and then one step back. We never know minute to minute how he is going to feel so we take advantage of the time he is feeling good to get some things done, move around, eat, shower, etc., before the icky feeling comes back and we start the process over again .