And We're Home!

We had a pleasant surprise today.  J finished his last IV dose of chemotherapy this morning.  By the treatment protocol he is on he needs another dose of chemotherapy through a lumbar puncture tomorrow, but they do those under sedation and getting sedation on a weekend for a non-emergent case is not going to happen.  He's scheduled for Monday.  Rather than make us wait two days in the hospital for this treatment, they sent us home today.

The Lord's Hand Making Our Burdens Light

There have been a lot of little things that have happened over the last month that have made this a little more bearable.  Some may see these are mere coincidence, but I see these as tender mercies of the Lord and evidence that He is a part of our lives.  There is a story in the Book of Mormon of a people who were being denied their religious rights, and threatened with their lives if they were caught praying vocally.  This is part of their story (Mosiah 24:14-15):

And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

 Here are a few of the things that happened that have helped prevent a bad event from being worse, in no particular order:

Chemotherapy

J returned to the hospital Tuesday to begin his first round of chemotherapy.  Mom has been worried about how he will handle this and thought we would both need to be present with him.  Without trying to start a fight, I thought, "Why would we want to do that"?  It turned out that neither of us got what we wanted, because I came down with the flu.  One other child tested positive for influenza, two others were sick, and we all managed to keep the makers of Tamiflu in business all by ourselves.  Mom is the only one allowed to see J in the hospital.

Follow-up MRI

We repeated the MRI.  J complained about having to be in that noisy machine.  "I hate MRI's!!!".  Remember the steroids?  Oh, and adding the need to access his port right before this. He was not happy about this.

MediPorts

One of the nice things they do is place a medication port inside the body.  It has a little reservoir that can be punctured by a needle, just underneath the skin in the upper chest.  This is what the reservoir looks like with a needle in it.  Obviously not under the skin:).

2nd Time Home

We were allowed to take J home for the weekend.  This decision is where medicine takes on some of the personal biases of the doctors.  We have three pediatric oncologists.  Last week they rotated the inpatient coverage on a daily basis, which doesn't impact the main treatment plan, but can lead to a little inconsistency on the minor details.

Steroids

The lumbar puncture was the first part of treatment.  Later that day he received all of his chemotherapy.  Two doses of something that took 15 minutes each to deliver (really anticlimactic if you ask me).  The remainder of the week was steroids in the form of prednisone.  Here is a list of prednisone's side effects (conveniently available on the internet):