Lulu as a strawberry blond

Today I'm thankful for...
Having a house to live in
Cousins being here for our kids to play with
Having Lulu's sister Ibis here to support us
Prepared food by Lulu's mom

I had a really great day at the office today. Dr. Zeff helped with the patient flow and the training of the team, so the day was very busy but ran about smoother then I had expected. The caring and support is so wonderful. Parents have been so great, words can't explain how much pressure is taken off me and Lulu knowing we have such beautiful people to surround us. The days that I'm seeing patients are almost surreal. I feel as if I'm living in two totally separate realities. The Dr. Wilkerson; who is strong, funny, high energy, and decisive while I'm interacting with the patients and their parents, and the Daddy J.; the father and husband that is emotional, loving, and many times non-committal. Sometimes, while I'm doing a dental examination (that's when we look into the kid's mouth say a lot of big medical sounding words but actually are doing nothing) I'm surprise myself with what comes of my mouth (I probably surprise the patients, parents too?) I just say what comes to mind and it's genuine. I'm attached to both these two persons. Who can say they actually get a chance to wear so many hats/faces everyday in life or at least a few times each week? I guess the reason that I'm sharing the above information is that I think that many people (especially one's very close to Lulu and I are surprised by my ability to share my true feelings though this website and now their seeing what I feel in person) have never seen me in this light and they are concerned about my well being. Thank you all for praying for both Lulu and I and being genuinely concerned for both of us. (Oh, by the way; thank you for the book; "Breast Cancer Husband" by Marc Silver you know how you are?).

Lulu slept well last night considering the circumstances. I heard her get up once and she told me that she needed to take some Ibuprofen for the bone pain (the Neulastin can cause the long bones to be painful as they produce white blood cells rapidly to help the body fight infections). It a little weird to see my wife taking two or three naps per day, and sleeping in until 7 or later. Lulu is normally very high energy for 16 hours of the day and needs very little sleep. With the chemo; she's just tired all the time.

Lulu, her mom, and sister went wig shopping today. Everyday that passes she's getting closer to the big event of loosing her hair. I was thinking today about what I'd look like without hair. I was washing my hands in the bathroom between patients and I pulled back my hair to admire what I saw in the mirror. I was just thinking that I'm going to make "one scary old looking bald guy"! I really want to support Lulu in any manner possible, this would just be a very small sacrifice I cold make (I'm just glad that it's summer time, the sacrifice would be much greater in the cold of winter).

I went to see Lourdes tonight. I arrived at about 7:45 and she was sleeping (what she does 90% of the time). After taking her temperature, changing her diaper (yes it was stinky) she was mine for the next two hours. It's so hard to describe the felling of holding her close to your chest and seeing those cute little eyes occasionally peeking up at you. She was up and down with her O2 saturation. The nurse had to stay close to increase Baby Lourdes' oxygen flow to keep her satisfied. We have gotten used to her frequent desaturation, but would like to see her more stable. Lourdes is now on a alternating feeding schedule. She gets mommy breast milk once every 6 hours and formula once every 6 hours (they tell me that their are more vitamins in the formula then Lulu's breast milk) all I know is that Lourdes has been a little pig in the last couple of weeks. She has now almost doubled her weight. (close to 4 pounds). I said a little prayer for her and sang her happy 6 weeks old birthday song (it's the same song you sign on your first birthday, "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Lourdes, Happy Birthday to you"). I hated putting her back in the isolette for the night, but I worried I might drop her on the floor as I started to nod off I was so tired. Tomorrow night the nurse told me that I could give Lourdes a real water bath if I came to the NICU unit around 8:00 PM. I was pretty excited about that prospect, and ask if I could bring her a little yellow rubber ducky?

I rushed home to spend time with Lulu, the boys, and their cousins; before getting some sleep. Lulu's sister and the boys cousins were returning to Texas tomorrow, so we all said our heart felt goodbys. I had another long day tomorrow as we arrive in the office by 6:15 to prepare for patients at 7:00 AM. It was off to bed time.