Brendon went to see the kidney doctor, Dr. Hand, yesterday afternoon. He had to give a blood and urine sample to have further testing done. We are hoping to have the results later on this afternoon. After seeing Dr. Hand, we went to the clinic to be checked out. Bren's mouth has been hurting him so bad and the pain medicine we have is not helping him. The clinic gave Bren the choice of trying to up the home pain meds to see if that helped or being admitted and being put on morphine. His pain was bad enough that he decided to go to the hospital. He was admitted to Barbara Bush last night and was put on Benadryl and Morphine. He says that his mouth is feeling much better since he's been on the morphine. He was starting to question his decision to be admitted last night, but now he's glad he chose to be here. They can monitor his pain much better than we can at home. We are not sure how long we'll be here yet. The doctors/nurses think that he's on the tail end of the mouth sores, so hopefully it will feel better soon. Brendon's spirits are good today. He's a little sleepy, but he's in a lot less pain.

I'll update as soon as more we have more information....

Saturday we took a drive as a family to New Hampshire to look at the foliage and to look for moose. It was fun spending time together doing something as simple as driving around. We saw lots of turkeys, but no moose or deer. The leaves were very pretty.

Brendon has been feeling strange lately. Sunday afternoon he was saying that his throat hurt so we looked in his mouth and saw lots of white stuff in the back of his throat. We called the doctor's office on Monday, described the symptoms and they figured that he had thrush. They called in a prescription and he started taking it right away. One of our home health nurses came to draw Brendon's labs again on Monday night. She looked at his throat and said it was definitely thrush. Thrush is a relatively common side effect of some of his medicine. Tuesday morning we received a phone call from a nurse at the clinic asking how Bren was feeling. She said that his sodium levels were still down and he might start acting loopy. He has been very shaky and more tired than usual. He had his appointment for his chemo and checkup yesterday afternoon. His sodium has been low for a couple of weeks now and putting him on a fluid restriction isn't making it go back up. When Brendon's doctor (Dr. Rossi) gave him his checkup before the chemo she noticed how shaky he was. She had his labs drawn again to check his calcium and magnesium levels. She also decided to refer Bren to a pediatric kidney specialist. Brendon has an appointment on 10/9 with them. Dr. Rossi said that Brendon had low sodium levels before he started chemo so he may need to be on a medicine to regulate it, but it should go back to normal once he's done all of his chemo. The labs came back fine for his blood, calcium and magnesium levels. He did not go to school today. His mouth hurts, he hasn't been sleeping much, he's losing his appetite and his legs hurt. He looks fine, but we can tell he doesn't feel good. He wants to go to school, but we'd rather him stay home and rest when he's feeling this way...He actually slept at the clinic yesterday while he was getting his chemo for almost an hour. He hardly ever sleeps while getting his medicine. He has started to wean off the steroids and should be completely off them on 10/10/07.

Last night The Children's Museum of Maine presented an exhibit called Project Tomorrow. Brendon and 8 other kids from the Maine Children's Cancer Program participated in this project. The kids were asked to pick a subject to photograph who they felt would be or has been important in your life. Brendon chose to photograph his father. The Children's Museum have the photos on display along with some questions that the kids answered about their subjects. The subject was also asked to explain what being selected meant to them. It was a lot of fun and the pictures came out great! The photos are displayed on the walls of the stairways going to the second floor. They will remain on display until 11/4/07. If you go to the Project Tomorrow website you can see the photos that were on display. They all did a great job! Here are some pictures of the night....

We'll update again soon. Have a great day~

***BRENDON IS GOING TO LEGOLAND***

Tonight we had the Make-A-Wish representatives (Frank & Connie Ayotte) meet us at the house around 7pm to talk about Brendon's wish. They presented Bren with a gift wrapped in silver star paper. It was a Lego set that he had been wanting. In with the gift was an envelope addressed to Brendon Dunn. When Bren opened it, this was inside...

We are all so excited!! Brendon was grinning from ear to ear. We will be spending Christmas and Brendon's 10th birthday in California. It will be our first Christmas away from our family. We will leave 12/22/07 and come back 12/29/07. Here are some pictures from tonight.

On to other information, Brendon's sodium counts are a little low so they did labs today. As of 9:43pm we haven't heard from the doctor, so we are taking that as a good sign. He had kind of a rough week with joint pains and general aches. It hasn't been too bad, but just enough to be uncomfortable. His mood has been better. His cheeks are puffy and he says he thinks about food all the time. It's the medicine..