Today Ashton is 4.

Today is Ashton's 4th birthday. I am feeling a bit sad at the moment, wishing we could celebrate it like we did last year. He is sleeping right now and has been feeling pretty icky lately.
He finished his second round of chemo on Saturday and really, he did pretty well. I think he tolerated it much better then last time. He is definitely feeling it now though. We went in Tuesday afternoon and stayed 4 nights. It was a longer stay because it took a long time to hydrate him enough to start the chemo. I will say it was a tougher round for me but not because of Ashton. They put us in the ONLY shared room on the ward. We were put with a teenage girl and her lunatic father..it was a nightmare. I won't go into much about it but they did end up moving out of the room and were replaced by a MUCH nicer family. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't have the same type of situation we did this last time again. Things like that just shouldn't happen at Stanford, and believe me, I complained and filed a report.

Ashton had another hearing test this morning and the news isn't what I wanted to hear. He has some slight hearing loss. It is only of high frequency sounds so it won't affect his speech, but it is sort of sad to hear this news, especially on his birthday. I figured it would eventually happen but wasn't prepared to hear it today. They will be on top of this now and it could stay the same or it could get worse...we won't know until after his next chemo. It isn't reversible. We go up there again tomorrow for his 2nd syringe of Vincristine, the one chemo given on day 1 and day 7 of the cycle. Thursday he will be getting another blood draw and the dr. is thinking he will most likely need a red transfusion. Lets just all keep our fingers crossed that Ashton stays healthy and doesn't develop a fever while he is neutropenic, which would mean another hospital stay for us.

Happy Birthday Ashton, next year will be much better.