Day 4 A Birthday to Remember…

I received one of the greatest gifts that I could have asked for my Birthday today. Payton’s growth came back benign. Dr. Bowman said that he will let us know further what pathology thinks; but that it is not a Wilm’s cancer reoccurrence. What absolute terrific news to say the least. Today I feel like I can breathe and feel like a hundred pounds has been lifted off of my shoulders. I am so grateful to My Heavenly Father for helping me get through the past five weeks and for helping get us through this surgery. I have so much to be grateful for. When Dr. Bowman came with the news I couldn’t resist but to jump up and hug him. I have such a love for Dr. Bowman and know that he has Payton’s best interest at heart. It hurts that Payton had to go through such a major surgery to find this out, but we cannot look back and know that we had to do what we had to do given Payton’s history. I feel so blessed today.

Payton has made small improvements today and I am so proud of him. He started eating just little bites and drinking a bit more. The anastheologist approved to take out his epidural and Dr. Miller said it was ok to take out his cathidar and chest tube. All of these things hurt a lot coming out, but Payton was relieved to not have so many lines hooked to him. Dr. Miller really wanted Payton to try and take a few steps today and he was able to accomplish this. It was really hard for him to stand up and took us helping balance him, but it was a big improvement compared to the last 3 days. Payton has spent a good part of his day alert and awake. They put him on an oral Loratab and it seems to be working well. They are trying to switch him to an oral medicine so that we have adjusted to it before he heads home. Dr. Miller acted like we might be able to go home tomorrow and let Payton recover there. Payton would love that since he spends most of his day asking when he gets to go home. I fear that Payton is going to be deathly afraid of the hospital now that he is old enough to remember a lot of this.

We are grateful my mom has been able to stay with us and help with Savannah so that we could focus on Payton during this time. Payton loved spending time with Grandma today and Grandma was trying to sing to him and he was feeling loopy from his Loratab and thought that it was so funny to change the words to the song. It was good to see him act more like himself. We are anxious to get Payton feeling better soon. Dr. Miller thought that Payton would need to take it easy for around 3 weeks and 4 weeks as far as being outside on playgrounds or on his bike where he could fall or get hurt. I have so much to be grateful for and my heart feels so full of love today. Thank you so much for all your prayers and kind words.