Do I Even Dare?

Good news, but do I really dare post it?


First, some updating.  J walked around several times yesterday.  He ate a few Go-Gurts, but overall was still not getting a lot of food down.  Happily, that's the excitement of yesterday!

Last night was rough.  Chemotherapy kills cells that are rapidly dividing, which is mainly cancer cells, but the side effects are also based on other cells that are rapidly dividing, and also die from the chemotherapy (like blood cells).  Well, antibiotics kill bacteria, and they don't care if the bacteria are causing an infection or whether they are helping you with normal function, like digestion.  Yep, there is a lot of bacteria living in your gut, and when you use big gun antibiotics and eliminate your normal bacteria (and some not so big guns) you bring on diarrhea.  We made multiple urgent trips to the bathroom, at all hours of the night.  J also had a period of nausea and threw up.  Add to that some middle of the night vital signs and you have two sleepy guys.

I wanted to let J sleep a little this morning, but that's also a ridiculous notion.  Surgeons, pediatricians, and infectious disease doctors, nurses changing shifts, nurse assistants, child life, social work, all have to come by and say hi every morning.  We gave up the idea of sleep and he got out of bed.  He eventually agreed to try a bagel for breakfast and wanted grape juice.  He actually ate it and drank some Cran-Grape juice, and he was eating it when the oncologist came in, and he gained her approval, and he hasn't had any fevers for over a day.  Soooo (hopefully not jinxing anything) if he remains without a fever, we go home tomorrow.  I think J has had enough detours on his weeks off from chemo.  Here's hoping.