Encouraging News to Share

Brody did well again today with his chemo.  Today was his last dose of this round.  Brody has not been able to pee for about a week.  All of his urine has been coming into his nephrostomy bags rather than normal route.  Today, however, Brody finally had to go pee!  This is exciting news!  Hopefully, this means the chemo is starting to work and the tumor has managed to shrink off his urterers enough that some of his pee was able to make it to his bladder.  Also today I am feeling Brody's tumor just below his belly button rather than just above it where I was feeling it when he was admitted for this round.  And, his belly button is looking like it's old self again.  It's an innie again rather than transforming into an outie.  Super excited about these developments!  Brody and I high-fived today after he went pee.  And, he was grinning ear to ear when I told him what a wonderful sign that was.  It was a fairly significant amount of pee too (about 100ml).  Most the day today Brody was not interested in eating at all.  But late this afternoon and evening his appetite has started to pick-up.  He ate a slice and half of Little Caesar's sausage pizza for a late lunch.  Then this evening he had a small bowl of cinnamon toast crunch cereal with milk, half a cup of Spaghettio's, and 1 cup of Cherrio's with milk.  He managed to drink 8oz of grape juice today and 2 Capri-Sun juice pouches.  This is the most food he has eaten in awhile and he didn't get sick after either.  For the last several days Brody kept having a sensation that he needed to move his bowels and he kept trying to move them but there was nothing to move out of there.  His doctor suspected that the pressure from his tumor has been causing this.  He also has had a lot of issues with loss of bowel control this week.  Not fun stuff to say the least.  Today though he only had this happen to him one time early this morning.  He had control of his bowel function today/was able to tell when he really needed to have a bowel movement.  All this talk of bowel function may sound disgusting but it's been a big worry this week for us and today it was so encouraging to not see him struggling with this.  Anyhow, lots of positive stuff happening today.  It seems the chemo he has done this week is helping.  Let's pray it continues to work.  Brody will have another CT scan next week to check the size of his tumor and how effective or not effective his chemo this week has been.  If it's working he will keep repeating the same chemo drugs every 2 to 3 weeks (repeat as soon as his counts are high enough to get hit with it again).  Thanks everyone for all your prayers and support!