Recap of Today-April 12th, 2012

Although our day is far from over, I figured I would go ahead and write the recap. I may do two recaps tonight. You will understand once you read below.

Today started off as a good day! I hear it was a beautiful day outside, but never made out to see!

We woke up knowing that today was the start of our next cycle of chemo. We also woke up knowing that this round was going to be a more intense dose of chemo as well. Once again, they did not tell a lie.

We started by getting medicine that would fight the potential side effects of the medicine today. That started around 12 pm or so. After those meds had been run, it was time for the chemo. Side effects of his medicine today were not nausea as I thought before, but rather flu like symptoms.

We also learned today that we needed to change the outside of his port to make sure infection does not set in. They said they usually change it every 7 days. Since we are going to be here till next Thursday and he has had it since last Thursday, they thought we should have it changed.

They started the chemo at 2 pm thinking it was going to be a 6 hour treatment. That is crazy! The treatment is so intense that they had to check his vitals throughout the process. They started our checking every 15 min. Then they moved to every 30 min. After that they moved to every hour. About 2 hours into it, he started having a little reaction to the medicine. He was getting short of breath and complained that his chest was hurting a bit. So, they had to shut off the chemo for a bit and make sure he was ok. After getting the doctor to come up and check everything out, they gave him some other meds to help and then back on the chemo. He fell asleep and slept for a couple of hours. When he woke up, he felt so much better. The first thing he said when he woke up was, "Can I get something to eat?" Because they had to stop the medicine, once they started it up again they went back to checking every 15 minutes, 30 minutes and then every hour again.

The nurse was just in and said we still have 1 1/2 hours till it is done and then we move to changing the port. Once we get the old port out, we will let Caleb shower without having to get all taped up. After the shower, we will go get the new port put in.

So, the night is still young. There are still a few more things we need to do tonight. But life is good! We will get it done and potentially get to sleep in a bit in the morning(who am I kidding). But, if it makes Caleb better and helps him, we will do whatever we have to do!

So, today was different and we learned a lot of things! I will let you know how the rest of the night goes! I am sure it will be more fun than a barrel of monkeys!

Grace and Peace!