Day 22: April 28, 2012

Day 22                                                                                                Written Apr 28, 2012 10:58pm

Dallas slept off and on throughout the night. Travis stayed with him, I had homework to do so I had to stay at the Ronald McDonald house. Travis doesn't ever leave his side, occasionally to get something to eat, but not much more than that. Dallas has always been a daddy's boy, they are like best friends. :)

We did Dallas' dressing change around 10am. Seems like we are getting the hang of it, this time only relying on the nurse to administer medicine. The nurse said she's never seen a family, in all her years, completely do a dressing change. Looks like by the time this is over, Travis, Donna, and I will have mastered dressing changes.

Seems like each dressing change is getting harder and harder. Dallas is healing, so his skin buds are grabbing on more and more to the mesh and gauze, which makes it even more painful for him. Bleeding has also increased with these changes, but, it's a good sign, even though it makes you feel horrible to cause pain to your child.

Dallas had a lot of visitors today. Definitely a good thing for his mental state. I think that the more people he sees, the more it cheers him up... it makes him feel special.

Physical therapy came in and worked with him. He got out of bed and marched in place, had to do a half squat and stand on his tippy toes. Afterwards, he was completely exhausted.

Dallas began running a really high fever again, around 103. The tylenol and motrin didn't work, he had cold washcloths on him... a few hours later, his fever broke. They took more blood cultures to check for signs for infection, so we should know something soon. We're praying it's not another infection.

Dallas went for a wagon ride, about 20 minutes. Took him to the 7th floor where there's a light display. He seemed to like it. But halfway through his ride, he began trembling really bad, like he did when he was going through withdrawals. The nurse asked if he was cold, but he said no, so that scares us even more, especially running a fever.