Thursday, March 29, 2012

Day 3 - 3

Today was a GREAT day.  Steve would probably beg to differ, but I think it was great!  We both got up around 7:30 this morning.  He ate his breakfast (Honey Nut Cheerios with a few slices of banana and some blueberries).  We had one of our favorite nurses (Monica) from 7am - 7pm.  That always helps soooo much!  When we got into the room on Monday night, we had asked the nurse to run Steve's lines under his shirt and through his arm hole so he could take his shirt on and off and shower (he refuses to wear a gown).  Of course, they didnt start until after midnight that night and forgot to do that and Steve and I were both sleeping and couldn't remind them. Monica is expecting and can't get anywhere near any of the actual chemo, so she was not able to pause the chemo to fix the lines.  We waited about an hour for that chemo to finish and Monica came in and fixed the lines.  After that, Steve was able to shower and change clothes.  That always makes him feel so much better.  He usually doesn't have the energy the first couple of days, so he is really ready by day 3!!  After his shower, I lotioned him up real well.  By day 3, his skin is bright red and he starts itching and getting really dry skin.  For the rest of the day, he worked quite a bit, talked to his boss on the phone for about 30-45 minutes, sat up in the chair instead of laying in bed all day, walked around the nurses station, ate 2 chicken nuggets from Chik-Fil-A, and overall had a really good day.  I was sure to not mention that I thought he was having a good day, because I didn't want to "jinx" things.  Haha.  But come 7:15 pm the chills were back.  He was really fighting getting the Demerol and actually got really upset.  He has been a trooper through all of this and I was confused as to why he was so upset.  He is afraid that if he has chills everyday (he only had them day 1 the first round and day 1 and 2 the second round) that they will think the treatment is too much for his body and tell him he has to stop.  I reminded him that Dr. Kim was by this morning and said his blood work looks fine and that his kidney and liver functions are great.  The chills are just a side effect and are NOT going to cause them to stop the treatment.  He took the Demerol and some nausea meds and has been sleeping since.  I consider today a great day.  Like I told him, he has TWELVE hours of feeling good WHILE he is getting pumped full of poison.  I don't think feeling bad for 30 minutes makes this a bad day.

My funny moment of the day: MD Anderson offers so many things here.  They are nice enough to offer a "Cyber Center" where you can use computers, scan, fax, email, copy, etc.  This is run by volunteers.  There are many, many, many volunteers at MDA.  Ive seen them of ALLLLL ages.  Why they choose the 90 year old volunteers is beyond me?  Watching these 2 guys try and fax something for the guy ahead of me for over 15 minutes (on 2 different fax machines) was a hoot.  Luckily, after 15 minutes of practice, mine went fairly smoothly.

They were too cute!!

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