Crafts, Crafts, and more Crafts....

The last few days have been up and down for Lauren. As long as she is on the pain medication and nausea medicine then she feels okay. She has been sleeping a lot which is her way of dealing with pain and when she is awake she has tons of craft projects to work on thanks to everyone who brought her such cool things. She loves to do craft things and it keeps her mind diverted when the pain level goes down. The nurses love to come in and see what project she has going. We really appreciate them. This morning one of Lauren's doctors came in and told us they wanted to get her to try and drink or eat clear liquids today to see how she would handle them. They gave her pain medication before they got her to drink and then we let her drink water. Within 10 minutes, she was curled up on her bed in pain. She cried and cried and said she wanted to go home and she was really trying. I told her that we knew she was but that she just wasn't ready yet. Because of that, we are now going to wait a few more days before we try again. They are going to change her TPN (the nutrients going thru her IV) a little bit to give her more lipids because she needs the nutrition. They don't want her to go into surgery being nutrient depleted. Her surgical team came by this morning and after examining her said that she isn't ready for the surgery yet. We aren't sure when that will take place. She also had a bone denisty test done today to check on her bones. We don't have those results back yet. They will just continue doing what they have been doing and we are hoping that she will feel better soon. We do have doctors that listen to Jeff and I and we can sit down and work together to come up with a plan for Lauren. I will say though that Jeff and I are very glad that Dr. Muenzer will be back on Monday. We will all be glad to sit and go over things with him. For now...we are just taking things one day at a time. Thanks to everyone for the phone calls, e-mails and visits. We love you for it and it is making our time here easier to deal with. We will keep you all posted.