We are so close to finishing this week's treatment! John was very reluctant to get here since this is the hardest week on him. When we met with Dr. Wright (his sarcoma oncologist) she was pleased with how things were going. She really wants John's radiation and next round of chemo to be on time (Feb 2*), and she was glad that his 90% dose of the past two weeks had treated him so well. She is expecting good results on his scans next week. She said the same thing about it being more important to get a dose of chemo on time rather than to get the full dose on a delayed schedule. So she dialed this week's treatment to 80% of the original dose and one day less. This was great news and ALMOST made getting admitted for treatment easier on John. John was up and coherent up until Tuesday night. We had a lot of visitors Tuesday; thank you all who came, it was so good to visit. One of our visitors is a second cousin to John whose wife is going through treatments so we swapped cancer stories with them. Wednesday John tried sleeping all day. I thought today would be worse than yesterday, but John got up this morning for a walk and tried to be social for a little bit. But the exhaustion is hard to fight. My grandma came to visit me for breakfast and we walked up and down the stairs for a while. That was such a nice visit for me. My grandma is the best! She is always on call when we are in the hospital to bring us meals since the hospital food smells/tastes like the hospital. Last time we were here for this I/E treatment John had to be on oxygen and that helped him stay a little better because he couldn't smell the hospital smells. This time he hasn't needed oxygen but I brought a nose plug for him. He is on constant fluids and the smell of the fluids just take over everything - so the nose plug helps.
For entertainment, we still had some of the countdown chain leftover from our last stay, so we have been going through more of that - thank you again to all who contributed! I brought some photo albums to work on, so my file cabinet is a little less full. I had a work project I brought with me. I worked on a rubix cube. I caught up on some tv shows. We also got some 24 piece puzzles that friends and family had written notes on the back of; those were fun to read and our boys will love their new puzzle collection!
We are so excited to see John's brother and niece next week who are coming from TX to visit! And most of all I am excited to get Daniel back this weekend! I have only been with him for 2 days out of the last 2 weeks!! John's mom and her neighbors/friends/family have taken such good care of him, but we are SO ready to spend some time with him!
So our schedule update is that John is getting his last dose of chemo tonight and then fluids. We should be able to go home tomorrow. On the 21st, he will get all of his scans. On the 26th the entire team of doctors will meet to discuss John's progress and decide if anything in the treatment plan should change. So please everyone, pray for the doctors the morning of the 26th! I think that day is also a follow-up with the ENT oncologist (who is not a part of the big meeting). And then probably the 30th is a practice run for the radiation. Feb 2 will be radiation and another 5 day stay with chemo. And then I think he gets a week off chemo but he will have radiation every day except holidays and weekends until he gets, I think, 28 doses.
*Happy Birthday to Jill, Shauna, Turpin, Christina and anyone else sharing that birthday!
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