Thursday, November 12, 2009

Fat Lip

I followed Luke around like a mother hen yesterday while he rode Joe's scooter. He was having a great time...until...one little turn and....smack !...he hit his mouth on the handle. He was wearing his mask, so at least it was a clean hit, but his lip is huge. It is never fun to see your kid get hurt, you feel worried and guilty, but when your kid who just had a bone marrow transplant gets hurt, yikes, it's like magnified like 100 times. I was really freaked out. I'm so worried about infection right now and the mouth is so full of germs. I called his oncologist right away to see what I should do and they said "ice it and rinse his mouth every time he eats...that's all you can do".

Today, Luke, Grace, Pete and I left for Sacramento at 7am and we just got home at 1:45 pm. Everything went well. Luke's potassium level is good and his blood pressure was fine. One hour of normal saline and two hours of Amphotericn then more fluid. He is tolerating it good so far:)

We made some friends in San Francisco during Luke's transplant who's daughter Layla was diagnosed with the same cancer as Luke, stage three and everything. She had a relapse nine months after her transplant. They traveled to San Francisco (from Arizona)to have the new tumor removed and now just found out Layla has more cancer on her liver and in her lungs. I am broken hearted for them :(

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Go Away Infection !!!

Well the decision has finally been made to go back on I.V. anti-fungal medication. Luke will receive a double dose of what he was having before but only two days a week. We went for his first dose today and everything went really well. They wanted to pre-medicate him with benadryl and zofran because the dose increased so much but I opted not to. I guess that was a good choice because he was just fine. No problems what-so-ever ! Yipee. They want to repeat his C.T. scan before Thanksgiving and If they see more infection they will have to do a lung biopsy:( I'm praying hard this will not be the case. Go Away Infection!!

Luke will also be starting a medication called Isotretinoin. This is known to help fast dividing cells quickly mature so if they are cancerous they become benign. He will have to take four pills a day on a two week on two week off schedule for six months. This stuff causes most commonly skin peeling but of course the list of other possible side-effects is quite long. I hate reading all that. I'm just thankful God is in control of all this. Mike had to remind me of this today because I was starting to get depressed and stressed and grumpy...he texted me... "Just don't forget who's in charge of the universe".