19th Week of Chemo

We arrived at the hospital at noon on Valentine's Day. Jeremy received a few Valentine gift bags that were donated to the hospital. Child Life and volunteers delivered the bags, wishing Jeremy a Happy Valentine's Day. I am continually amazed by the generosity of others.

Jeremy does not like to get into the hospital bed until he is too sick or too tired to stay up in the chair. We usually play games, read stories, or watch a movie while we wait for chemo to start (which is a few hours of prep work) and be administered (about six hours to run the chemo through his port). Shortly after we arrive, the nurse runs IV fluids through Jeremy's port. After he is well hydrated the nurse calls the pharmacy and they prepare his chemo medicine. While we were waiting for the pharmacy to prepare and deliver his chemo medicine, Jeremy started throwing up. The nurse said this is common. Children can start to feel anxious or mentally associate their past experiences of being sick with chemo. This last chemo was hard on him. He was up all night throwing up. The nurse gave him some additional medication for nausea, and by mid morning he was doing better. We were able to come home late Wednesday afternoon. The first night home we gave him IV fluids in his port. We set the alarm clock so we could stay on top of his nausea medicine through the night. By Thursday night he was doing much better, so we started his formula feedings at half rate.  

Jeremy likes to sit in this chair each morning as he waits for his G-tube feeding to finish. He watches his brothers and sister get ready for school and talks with them while they eat breakfast. Since there was no school on Friday, the kids slept in. Jeremy fell back to sleep with a quiet house! 

Although the beginning of the week was a challenge, the week ended good. By Saturday, Jeremy was doing very well. We had a nice lunch with Aunt Angie visiting from Chicago and Uncle Dave and cousin Cade also came over. Later that evening we attended the Stars on Ice. We joined HopeKids an organization that provides monthly activities for children with life threatening illnesses. This was the first activity that we attended. We had a really fun time. The Stars on Ice program was centered around the 10th year anniversary of the 2002Winter Olympics. We were pleased to see Mitt Romney and hear his short speech. It was fun to watch past Olympians skate on the ice. Jeremy was very tired by the end of the evening and he fell asleep on the way home. It was a good day!