In the home stretch

Posted by Sammy on Jun 17th, 2009 | no comments

This morning around 6am Gary finished his last bag of EPOCH. They started him on the Rituxan. When I got to his room around 7:45 he was still sleeping. The physician’s assistant came in shortly after to check on him and he was telling her that he was getting kicked in the ass by this one and that he was feeling sorta itchy. She turned on the light and low and behold he had a rash on his abdomen and also up by his collar bone. They immediately stopped the infusion and gave him more benadryl. They gave the benadryl some time to take and then once he was feeling better they started the Rituxan back but at a lower rate of dosage.

He is finally finished with that bag, just had his 2nd blood draw of the day and is now getting started on the Cytoxan which will take only 30 minutes. And then he’ll be finished with round 1 of chemo!!!!!

If this wasn’t real before

Posted by Sammy on Jun 16th, 2009 | no comments

Boy is it real now!

Gary’s nurse just came in to go over what will happen tomorrow morning. He’ll get the last two chemo drugs as soon as his 4th EPOCH bag runs out. They’ll start him with Rituxan and once that is finished he’ll get Cytoxan. He should be done around noon tomorrow. They have 3 more blood draws to do and they’ll be doing his vitals several times during those two drugs because he can have a reaction to them.

She went over how he’ll need to take his temperature daily and will be in close contact with the nurses up here at all times. If his temp goes above 100.4 he is to go immediately to the ER. I asked her if this is common and if we should expect an ER visit at some point, and she said yes. It’s not that we’ve done something wrong, its just how his body handles it so yes at some point we will more than likely be going to the ER because he’ll be neutropenic. Good to know!

She went over foods to eat and the injections he’ll need to give himself until the nurses tell him to stop. She also went over hand hygiene and just overall common sense about how he doesn’t need to live in a bubble yet he needs to be aware of his surroundings.

It’s just crazy! I know we’ll get used to this new way of life but WOW, if things haven’t changed yet, they sure will change as soon as we leave that front door on Thursday.