Pablo And A Day Of Firsts

It's been an interesting day. Pablo turned five a week ago. By this age, we aren't expecting a lot of firsts. But we are now a cancer fighting family, and the word expectation has a different meaning for us than it did seven weeks ago.

Today has been filled with a bunch of firsts:

• Helping Pablo deal with the first real physical pain he's ever experienced

• Seeing Pablo's normally bright, expressive face hanging blankly, and his normally crystal-clear eyes hazed over from Novocaine, Morphine and Vicodin

• Helping Pablo endure that pain as he sits up in bed and sits in a chair (he has to sit upright 60-90 minutes a day to help his lungs recover from the collapsing effects of anesthesia).

• Pablo staring at us with lazer eyes and screaming "Don't touch my body!" when we try to help him (he is normally very huggy/snuggly/affectionate).

• Feeling the 'marathon' aspect of Pablo's cancer treatment - ie, even though everything is going well, we realize we are at, like, mile marker 4, even though it feels like we cruising thru mile 12

All that said, Pablo IS doing well. We had a breakthrough just now. Getting him to move from the chair to bed took 20 or 30 minutes, but he DID IT! He verbally expressed his fear, and how bad his tummy hurts when he moves. And then, with some visualization culled from our cycling adventures and breathing he learned from Ananta's yoga classes at Walther, HE WALKED THROUGH THE PAIN!

The relief in his eyes was worth enduring the pain of seeing him in pain.

Goodnight everybody.

Fireworks are illegal.  If you live in LA, so is driving while holding a cell phone to your ear.