We survived a second week one of chemo! The boys had a blast at all the houses they went to this week. A huge thank you to everyone who watched them for us! And we know that we have a long list of more people who are willing to help going forward; thank you to all our volunteers! My heart broke when I overheard a lady trying to schedule her treatments around her kids' schedules and she said that she couldn't work out one of the days because she didn't have anyone to help her. I wished that I could have offered some of the help we have to her!
Our days this week were spent 2 hours driving round trip and about 5 hours in the hospital. We check in before they will get the chemo ready. Then we wait about an hour and they give pre-meds to help with the nausea. Then they give that a little time to kick in. Then John received a 90 minute infusion, then there was a 30 minute gap before they could give the next chemo which was another 90 minutes. (The first day is the only day he has three drugs and that third drug only takes 5-10 minutes.) Needless to say, I got a lot of studying done, and John got in some work hours. I will say this about the infusion center: when they say you are done you can walk out the door! With all the times John was inpatient for chemo, they would say you are done and you could still be stuck at the hospital for hours until someone officially checks you out of their care.
We found out that the second drug will be covered by insurance as an oral medication. It's not really a pill, but it's a liquid that John can drink. So next time around that will be nice for several reasons. It should be tolerated better than the IV. There won't be an IV every day for 5 days in a row. And I won't have to drive around a nauseous husband! (While John never lost his food in the car this week, Daniel did on Saturday. So that's made the weekend fun; and I'm so sorry to my neighbor that had him when it started!)
John will have labs drawn this week to see how the chemo affects his blood, specifically his immune system. We are hoping that John falls into the expected outcome, where his immune system doesn't get low enough to send him into neutropenic fevers.
Now we have a break until April 11th. And that should be the only day we have to go to the hospital for an IV chemo that week.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
New Round of Treatments
The past two months have been pretty crazy. I started school (I'm getting my Bachelor's in Accounting). John and I were able to go to Fiji. We got home from Fiji and had John's regularly scheduled scans to follow up on his cancer. We found out that they were concerned about his spine and had an MRI done on his spine to get a better picture of what was going on. The day after his MRI, we met with three of his doctors. We got different feedback from all of them about their impressions from the scans. They ranged from super hopeful that there was no recurrence, to go fight this thing again. By the end of the day, we had a biopsy scheduled for his back and were told that the tumor board would discuss John's case and get everyone's input-at which point they would decide for sure whether or not to do the biopsy. We met with those doctors on a Thursday. Tumor board wasn't meeting until Monday, so on Friday we decided to go take our kids to California while John was still healthy enough to go show them a good time at Disneyland and other parks.
We spent Friday night to Wednesday night as a family visiting Disneyland, SeaWorld, Legoland, California Adventure and the beach. We both had more fun and became more tired than you can imagine!
On Monday at Legoland we received the call with the results from the tumor board discussion. They said that they were confident it was cancer, no biopsy needed, start chemo.
The doctor presented a possible chemo regimen to us the week before Disneyland. When we got back, we found out that the insurance had denied it. So she gave us a plan B chemo treament. Yesterday when we went to see her, she had just gotten off the phone with the insurance company and they ended up agreeing to cover Plan A. Plan A consists of 3 chemos. (Sounds a lot better than the 5 John had last time!) One of the chemos is one that John had before - Vincristine administered as an IV. The other 2 will be new drugs for John-one is a pill, the other can be either IV or pill depending on insurance. The schedule is 5 days on chemo. 2 weeks off. Repeat 3 times. Rescan to make sure the cancer is responding. If the cancer responds, John will continue treatment for a minimum of 6 cycles and possibly up to 12 cycles.
Chemo started today, the 22nd.
Today all the drugs are IV because it all happened so fast they weren't able to get the one as a pill overnight. This week we will be at Huntsman every day for IV chemo. Next round, if the second pill gets approved, we will only have to come to Huntsman the first day for an IV and the rest of the week John can just take the pills at home. We are hopeful for pills because the side effects should be less aggressive in pill form than they would be in IV form.
We have been told that this chemo regiment shouldn't be as awful as last time. The neutropenic fevers are not expected this time like they were last time. And the chemo will either all be oupatient or at home. So we are hopeful that we won't have any or many overnight hospital stays.
We spent Friday night to Wednesday night as a family visiting Disneyland, SeaWorld, Legoland, California Adventure and the beach. We both had more fun and became more tired than you can imagine!
On Monday at Legoland we received the call with the results from the tumor board discussion. They said that they were confident it was cancer, no biopsy needed, start chemo.
The doctor presented a possible chemo regimen to us the week before Disneyland. When we got back, we found out that the insurance had denied it. So she gave us a plan B chemo treament. Yesterday when we went to see her, she had just gotten off the phone with the insurance company and they ended up agreeing to cover Plan A. Plan A consists of 3 chemos. (Sounds a lot better than the 5 John had last time!) One of the chemos is one that John had before - Vincristine administered as an IV. The other 2 will be new drugs for John-one is a pill, the other can be either IV or pill depending on insurance. The schedule is 5 days on chemo. 2 weeks off. Repeat 3 times. Rescan to make sure the cancer is responding. If the cancer responds, John will continue treatment for a minimum of 6 cycles and possibly up to 12 cycles.
Chemo started today, the 22nd.
Today all the drugs are IV because it all happened so fast they weren't able to get the one as a pill overnight. This week we will be at Huntsman every day for IV chemo. Next round, if the second pill gets approved, we will only have to come to Huntsman the first day for an IV and the rest of the week John can just take the pills at home. We are hopeful for pills because the side effects should be less aggressive in pill form than they would be in IV form.
We have been told that this chemo regiment shouldn't be as awful as last time. The neutropenic fevers are not expected this time like they were last time. And the chemo will either all be oupatient or at home. So we are hopeful that we won't have any or many overnight hospital stays.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)