Lots of Rest

Johnny has been sleeping all day.  Not just dozing, but deep sleep.  When he woke up he could only stay awake for a minute or two, and then he would be snoring again.  There were a couple of times this afternoon when we couldn't really wake him up.  That was kind of scary, but he when he did wake up he seemed ok.  Another thing that is kind of scary is that he has started talking in his sleep.  It's kind of funny listening to him blame stuff on Joey, and talk about how we shouldn't let Sophie in ICU because she's not old enough.  It's hard to tell if he's asleep because that's exactly what he would say if he was awake.  He also talks about catching mice, and blowing stuff up.  The inner workings of a 10 year old boy's mind.  The Hem/Oc doctors had warned that the high White cell counts (WBC) could cause problems in his brain, even strokes, so we are supposed to pay close attention to how he is acting.  When he started talking in his sleep Julie and I became very worried, but when he is awake Johnny seems coherent, and pretty normal.  Today they did a CT scan of his head to see if there are any problems.  The scan came back OK, so now we are thinking that Johnny is just really exhausted and is going straight into REM sleep.  This is causing him to start dreaming as soon as he closes his eyes.  Weird, but I guess when you are really, really tired weird things can happen.  

Johnny's WBC continue to trend downward.  His morning labs showed him down to 69!  That's still four times higher than normal, but a huge improvement.  At 9p the WBC was back up to about 95, but I'm hoping that the midnight labs will show a lower number.  Even though his WBC is much lower he doesn't really seem to be getting any better.  I was hoping that we would see immediate improvement, but that just isn't happening yet.  Ironically, this may actually be due to the drop in white cell count.  As the cells die they break apart and release all the crud inside.  This stuff can cause its own problems until Johnny's body can get rid of it.  Luckily all of his kidney functions still seem to be good, so if his WBC stays down hopefully he will start feeling better as he passes some of the garbage.  As of right now he is still one very sick little boy.