Home is on the horizon..albiet far far away......

Alright, they did an ultrasound on Jason's legs and it came back clear so no clots are still lingering there. Like I said before they are sending him home on the Lovenox shots for I don't know how long the pulmonary doctor said "a while." Jason and I attended the class on taking care of the Picc line. Its tedious but relatively easy. However they require you to attend the class TWICE wohoo just in case you didnt get it the first time. I would have thought my 7 pages of notes on a 30 minute class meant I was paying attention...aparrently not. In about an hour I have a return demonstration meaning I have to show a nurse from the infusion team that I can change the bandage. I think I got it in the bag. They said allow 30-45 minutes for this demonstration I dont really know what about changing a bandage is going to take that long but Ill let you know. Jason is no longer having breathing treatments and he has not been on O2 for 3 days so that probably means we wont have to have it at home. I finally got him out of bed and down to Kim's Place(the hang out for 30year olds and younger). We played video games, fixed and tuned their guitar, played a game of pool ( he still kicked my butt), and talked to the volunteer. The volunteer gave us a stuffed animal and a book to take to Ronan. They get alot of donations but they cant give the children on the ward stuffed animals. It was very sweet. She said we were a neat couple, the compliment meant alot to us. We have gone through more in our 3 year marriage than a of people go through in a lifetime. We suppose it could always be worse. Next week is our 3 year anniversary, we havent figured out what to do since we have to stay at home but I'll find something to make it neat. Well I will update when there is more to say. Enough of my babble for now.
Kim

Walk a Picc line...

So, no ultrasound yet of Jason's legs, hopefully tomorrow. This afternoon his IV infiltrated (leaked into his arm) thank god it was just saline and not chemo. They stopped that one and called the IV team, they tried 2 different times to get an IV started but alas it did not happen. The one they did get placed infiltrated as soon as they pushed liquid in. His veins are just to beaten up from the chemo, the nurses were all impressed that he had held off on a line as long as he did. So they placed a picc line. This is a port that is placed in the inside of the upper arm that follows the vein until it leads in to the superior vena cava ( biggest vein in the body). It was placed using ultrasound and made sure it was in the right place by xray. I have to attend a class tomorrow that will tell me how to take care of it once we go home. He said that they numbed it up using lidocaine and he cant really feel it all and is now kicking himself for not getting it earlier. ( they kicked me out of the room claiming they needed to keep a sterile field, somehow me sitting on the other side of the room messed this up.) Well, we are now getting chemo and instead of the early start time we had yesterday we are back to starting late......again. I think Jason is destined to never get chemo before 5pm. He still has a little pain in his back when he breathes but he went today with no oxygen. He still has breathing treatments every 6 hours to help with the pneumonia. Lets hope this is all the excitement we get this go round!!
Kim

Blot clot(s)??

So they did a CT scan last night and it showed that Jason has a/some blood clot(s) in his right lungs. They started him on lovenox shots to help break up the clot(s) so that his body can reabsorb them. They are keeping him on an antibiotic because there might be alittle pnemonia as well. Hopefully the pulmonary doctors will be in later to tell us a bit more. I dont if they will still do the broncoscopy but he is scheduled for a doppler ultrasound to try to determine where these clots are starting from, if he has DVT (deep vein thrombosis) or what. We will start chemo today so we theoretically should be done on Thursday depend on what time they start today. If its too late because of 14 hour chem and post cisplatin rehydration it will be Friday. Oh well, at least we know a little bit more will post again when I know more. He is feeling sore on his right side and it still hurts to take deep breaths but we went down and played with Ronan in the park today. Starting tomorrow no one under the age of 12 will be allowed to enter MD Anderson unless they are patients, so no more Bubba for right now. We suppose its for Swine Flu precautions, our nurse said she would find out.
Keep up the prayers.

Kim

Really? Alright, what do we do next.

So, Jason started having some minor pain while breathing on Thursday and we thought he might have slept wrong and pulled a muscle. Well he woke up Friday morning and we were to be admitted into the hospital for chemo. The pain started to become more severe and we called his clinic and they told us if it was really bad for us to go to the ER or we could just wait for him to get a room. Well from what you can remember from our other trip Jason decided to wait it out.
We got a room around 4:30 pm, Jason started to have a lot of trouble breathing and alot of pain, I called the nurses and he was put on oxygen and they called the doc on call. They were going to treat it as pleuralsy and start him on a diuretic and an NSAID. He was sent for an xray to verify diagnosis and rule out pneumoni(his lungs sounded clear). They then started the chemo, he got premeds and the bleomycin. They had started the etoposide but stopped and said that the Dr. looked at the Xray and he has a Pleural effusion which is basically fluid collecting in the sac around his right lung. They are to halt the chemo, get an urine analysis and blood cultures, start him on an antibiotic and the Dr. will see him in the morning to discuss further treatment.
So now the pure boy is resting in an upright position because he cant breathe when he lays down. I had to wheel him up to his room and he can barely get up to go to the bathroom. We knew rough days were ahead but this came out of nowhere it seems. Well I will make sure he gets some pain medicine so that he can sleep and I will update tomorrow or today rather when we know more.

Kim

Good Days and Great Days

So we went in and he got his Bleomycin last Friday. His counts were awesome and he was having a good day. I was the one who actually fell asleep waiting for the Physician Assistant. We went and had mexican food after and then went home and took a nap. He then headed out with his Dad and rode a motorcycle around First Colony and visited some friends. He was so happy he got to ride. We had another good day Saturday and a Great day on Sunday. He did pretty good today as well. I attribute this to the Neupogen shots keeping up the blood counts.
The only side effects that he has had so far are truly!!! awful smelling gas (not that this is terribly different from normal.), some tinnits (ringing is his ears), he is having problems tasting his food. So anything with a really strong flavor is what he is craving now. Well we go back in on Friday for more Bleomycin. Wohoo, but the next week we go in for round 3 of inpatient chemo. Its getting closer to being done. Its insane how quickly yet incredibly slowly this time is going. I will update when we have more to say.
Kim