Chemo #1

What is God trying to teach us? Are we handling this whole roller coaster so well that he needs to throw a wrench in it and make it a little more difficult. Last year we endured a 9 hour car ride home the night before Max's surgery and a snow storm and got stuck on I-5 when it shut down and this year the snow/ice storm hit just in time to change all of our plans. With that nightmare in the back of our heads it just meant a little more coordination, so we had backup plans and backup-backup plans and then worse case scenarios just in case.  With hotel or hospital bags packed, enough food and meals to last everyone all week, luckily it all worked out. Tuesday Max and I left at 5 am to make it to the hospital in time for his first chemo treatment. Child care for the girls went smoothly and we were able to get out by 7pm in order to make it home before the next storm hit. We went back and forth with our doctors and staff about what to do with Max, he needed two days of treatment and another day in the clinic with the pending storm it would require us to stay in the hospital all week, which I wasn't excited about being separated from the rest of the family and also risking our insurance not covering our hospital stays if it wasn't entirely needed. But we also had to be within 1 hour of the hospital in case a fever struck. We decided to get the necessary chemo part taken care of on Tuesday and than reschedule the rest of the appointments and infusions on Thursday and Friday. They had a hard time keeping the unit staffed on Tuesday and knew the rest of the week would be worse.

We got through labs and dr appt and got Max premedicated really fast to try to be as efficient as possible so we could get home. BUT Max turned out to be that 1 in 15% that has the opposite effect to benedryl, which was a required premed due to the risk of an allergic reaction. So instead of gently falling to sleep like most kids, Max went completely ballistic, shaking, twitching, screaming and totally uncomfortable, I was unable to console him and it made getting an infusion even more unpleasant for all of the rest of the kids who had to listen to Max. The problem was that this continued for two hours during the start of the chemo so the doctors and nurses had to keep an extra close eye on him to make sure it wasn't him having a reaction from the chemo. They slowed down the rate of infusion, so much that the pressure of his blood was heavier than the rate going in and several times his blood would pump back through his tubing. Luckily we were able to get him to at least settle down a little which made his blood pressure decrease and then when the benedryl wore off Max was finally able to sleep. I am sure he was completely exhausted, than when he woke up Grandma and Papa showed up after Grandma's chemo day to play with him which made the rest of the day much better.