Shots and hospital stays

Through the years, it seems I have morphed from waking up to an alarm clock to waking up when someone jumps on me or starts randomly talking about a new toy or a cartoon they want to watch. Ben is an early bird and has been my alarm clock for the past 4 (almost 5) years. So, I questioned whether I would actually wake up with him being gone (he spent the night at Grandpa and Grammy's). Ev almost always sleeps later than Ben minus maybe a handful of days. Thanks to Jeff, I was not only awake early enough to have a couple cups of coffee, I was also graciously woken.

Ev needed to be at the hospital today by 8 am, which I actually prefer as long as we aren't there for the whole day. We were in at 8 am and out by noon. It was nice to have a short visit. He got two chemo meds, one of which was a stand-in for PEG (the one he became allergic to). At the count of three, both his thighs were "poked" and he was pretty much done...for today. Tomorrow we will go back and he will get two shots again, and then 4 more days beyond until we are done with this particular drug (PEG replacement).

For those wondering how "1-2-3" can add up to 4 hours at the hospital...there's a lot of wait time, accessing his port, blood tests, urine tests, time to be monitored after being given a drug, and any other randomness that can occur.

His ANC was 812 today. His hemoglobin has dropped and so have his platelets. More transfusions might be on the horizon, but the human body is an uncertain thing...so we will see. And, he has a week to lay low (nothing but antibiotic and nausea meds).

In two weeks we will begin our next phase, Interim Maintenance. This phase is less intense, but will require us to be admitted to the hospital 4 times for about 4 days within a two month period. Yes, this means every two weeks we will be at Riley (hopefully for no more than 4 days at a time). This will start September 17. November 12 we will move on to yet another phase. And, with much anticipation by January 2014 our visits to the hospital should go down to once a month. Cheers to the New Year!