Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Round 2 Dose 2






Yesterday morning Mom went in to the infusion center to have her second dose of this second round of chemotherapy. She was rather anxious after her experience three weeks ago of becoming violently ill after her initial dose of this new chemo. The Thursday before she and Dad met with Dr Kenyon, the oncologist, to discuss if Mom would go ahead with this course of treatment. Dr. Kenyon asked her, "What do I have to say to convince you to go ahead?" The three of them then proceeded to have a conversation about all the very convincing reasons Mom needs to do this second round of chemo. Most important, is that the survival statistics are better for women with inflammatory breast cancer who follow this specific course of treatment. They also discussed how the medications could be adjusted to hopefully reduce the nausea and other ill effects.





This brings us back to yesterday. I understand that Mom was pretty anxious during the infusion process. When she came home she was able to sleep. Around 3:30 she started to feel sick. Dad applied some of the "magic 4" topical anti-nausea medication. This medication instead of making her feel less noxious, caused her to have hallucinations and become rather paranoid and out of her head. She also developed a rash on her face. Dad called the doctor and struggled with their slow response. Three hours later he was able to talk to an on call doctor who recommended a course of action using some of the medications on hand.





The report I have from Dad this morning is that the night went pretty well. Mom's nausea has stayed at a 3 or a 4 on scale of 1 to 10. Dad says that she is also no longer out of her head, though she is still anxious and troubled.





Aside from all of this, today is my daughter Maya's 8th birthday. Steve, the kids, and I are traveling up to Portland to go to the zoo. We had our family celebrations earlier knowing that today would not be a great day around the house because of the chemo schedule. We are going to try to have a special day out and about. But, because I will be away most of today, I wanted to get the word out to our community about Mom's second dose.





I hope that this day is not too hard on her. I hope that the medications are able to keep the nausea at a low level, while not making her feel like she is going crazy.

Let me explain the pictures before I end this posting. Two of them are from our Sunday school Da Vinci days art project. We made super heroes. Elias is in the "courage" super hero and Maya is in the "love" super hero. Then there is a picture of Elias as the Mona Lisa. The last picture is of Maya's little birthday tea party.






More later,


Emily

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Positive Picture Post






Hello Everyone,
Here I am as promised bringing you good news and good pictures. I know some of you were a bit anxious for the good news to arrive earlier, but I do lead a busy, exciting life on Buchanan St. and my blogging time is limited.
To review, last week on Tuesday Mom became quite ill after her new dose of chemo. Tuesday evening new anti-nausea drugs were prescribed. Wednesday Mom continued to stay in her bed and was still very noxious. The three anti-nausea medications together were only able to make her less ill and did not hold it back entirely. Thursday, upon advice from a local nurse friend, my Dad petitioned the doctor for another anti-nausea medication called "magic 4". This medication is made by the compounding pharmacy and is applied topically. Dad brought it home Thursday around dinner time and Mom added it to her regime. Around this same time Mom was able to rise up from her bed and take to the chair for the first time since chemo. Thursday evening Steve and Dad went to a special choir practice where a choir director candidate was to work with the choir as part of his hiring process. I brought the kids in to see Mom before they went to bed and offered them a creamsicle as an evening snack. As I was pulling the creamsicles out of the freezer Mom called out that she would like to try one too. I passed out the snack and was happy to see Mom actually take a few calories in. I left her there as I helped the kids with their shower and jammies and bedtime story. As I was reading to the kids in a different room I heard Mom up and about. Soon she came to find us and was eating a piece of toast. It seemed truly miraculous to have her up and about and interacting with us again. I call it the miracle of the creamsicle.
Mom continued to improve that night. The next morning she got herself up and eating a bit. She was determined to go downtown to the annual summer shoe sale at the local Birkenstock store. This is now called the miracle of the shoe sale. After the shoe sale Dad took her through the drive-thru at Burger King to get an ice cream cone as she was suddenly hungry again after several days of not eating and then the energy expenditure of shopping. In the drive-thru she made the sudden decision that a whopper jr. was what was needed instead of an ice cream cone. This, of course, is now documented as the miracle of the whopper jr.
I might be a little exuberant with my miracle classification, but Mom's resurrection was miraculous to me. Since she has gotten up and about she has struggled with heart burn, shakiness, dizziness, and fatigue. She wants to have more energy. But, she also recognizes that once again she is doing pretty good. She does not look forward to the next round of this chemo, which will be July 29.
Before July 29 we have more exciting times to come. Steve's birthday is July 20 and he will be turning 35 years old. Maya's birthday is July 30, but we will celebrate it early so that Mom can be a happy participant instead of a sick one. Maya will be 8 years old.
On a completely different note, I feel like I need to say a word about a dear friend of my brother. My brother's long time friend and neighbor was found on Tuesday morning in his hotel room in a coma. He also had a broken wrist and they suspect the coma is caused by some trauma to the head. This friend is currently up at OHSU where they will soon try to bring him back to consciousness. The friend is the father of two young children. Jeremiah and the friend's wife have been with him in the hospital since he arrived. I would ask that all your prayers and good thoughts be turned to this man, his family, and my brother as he deals with another trauma in his life.
Love, Emily

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The New Stuff

I am blogging away from home so I am not able to attach any great new photos of beautiful baby Sam or any terrific action photos of my kids on their new play structure. Instead I will write about the rotten new chemotherapy that Mom took on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning at 8 am Mom went in for her new chemotherapy. This chemotherapy is one that she will have four times with three weeks in between the doses. We had gotten some information that lead us to believe that this chemo might have more side effects, but others had told us that there was no reason to believe that it would be any harder than the last stuff. Mom and Dad were at the infusion center a bit longer than normal, but arrived home in a very good mood around 1:00 pm. Mom said that in some ways the infusion of this chemo was easier. They did not give her the massive dose of benedryl with this cocktail and thus she was not as sleepy and groggy. She said that she felt fine!

At around 4:00 pm that all changed. Mom made a move from the warm living room to the cool basement as nausea began to take hold of her. She then proceeded to get rather violently ill. Dad called the doctor and his nurse called in two new anti-nausea prescriptions to add to the one very expensive anti-nausea that she was already taking. I stayed downstairs with Mom as Dad ran to the pharmacy. When Dad returned Mom tried one of the new medicines. This was not enough and she continued to be overpowered by sickness and nausea. She then tried the third medicine and this combination was able to slow the vomiting. I believe Mom and Dad were able to go to sleep at around 11 pm.

Yesterday Mom continued to take all three anti-nausea medications. She told me that with all three of these she still feels like she has the very worst morning sickness. The medications are able to keep her from vomiting, most of the time. She is still caught in the grip of the nausea all the time and sometimes she cannot help but completely loose it. She is also, obviously, in the woozy haze of all those medications. Mostly she is in bed or on the couch in the basement. Mostly she keeps her eyes closed and lays very still.

I think that I have heard from several sources that this might last about three days. Part of me wanted to wait to post this blog until she was through it and I could report the good news of her recovery as well as the rotten news about what she has to endure with this new chemo. But, perhaps the good news will get it's own posting with the cute pictures of all her lovely grandchildren to match.

Love, Emily