Week 1 Redo

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.