The Big Guns

Well, it turns out I was wrong about which order Matthew's Chemo would be given in this week. He had Vincristine and Doxorubicin yesterday, and will get Peg Asparaginase on Friday.

All along, I've said how well Matthew handles the Chemo. He is really made out of some seriously hearty stuff. He still eats - not super well, but well enough. He has maintained his weight. He has not been nauseous.

We've had a prescription in the cupboard for a long time that helps with nausea, and we've only used it once before.

The Doxorubicin is going to change all of that. I am thankful that it's only for 8 weeks. He was up sick all night long. I gave him the Zofran (anti-nausea) but he kept getting sick, and I'm pretty sure he didn't get much benefit from it. He's finally sleeping peacefully right now, and I'm sitting here pondering.

I recently posted about how we have been lucky, and so many families have it so much worse than we do. Right now, I feel like a real cancer mom. Haggard and tired, and really worried about my son.

He also started steroids again yesterday. I am preparing for food marathons, and some weight gain. I have decided a whole new cruelty of this disease is giving a child medicine that will make him ravenous with hunger, combined with a medicine that will make him throw up everything he eats. It will only fuel the beast. Last night, as I gave him his first dose of steroids, I wanted to cry. I hate doing this to my baby boy. Steroids are so awful. He'll take them for 7 days, then have a 7 day break, then take them for another 7 days. They call that a pulse.

He understands better than I expected, though. Yesterday, at the clinic, he was playing with the child-life specialist, and he started drawing pictures for her on the whiteboard. It was a blob-body, and he drew cancer inside of it. Then marker-medicine went in the blob's mouth, and down its throat, and scribbled out the cancer. But then another cancer came, and he had to do it again. And again. And again. It was so cute, and it amazes me how wise he is. But it's sad to me that my 4 year old has to be that wise.

The bright side is that this is the big guns. This is what's going to save my baby. And it's only for 8 weeks. Then 8 more weeks of Interim Maintenance II, a mirror image of the phase we just got out of, albeit with increased doses. But then we're into Maintenance.

We can get through 16 weeks, right?

I found this, and really thought it was an appropriate time to add it. Excuse the french! =)

"When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell."

~Lance Armstrong