Sleepy Jason

I'm just posting what Debby wrote tonight. The internet at the hospital wasn't working.

Jason spent most of today sleeping but with good reason. During the night the nurses come in almost every hour to administer one drug or another and when they aren't doing that, they are taking blood samples, vitals, or getting him up on the scale to weigh him. Neither of us are able to get a good night sleep so we both are doing a lot of napping during the day. He is also very anemic again..his hemoglobin dropped down to 7.6 which required a blood transfusion which he is currently receiving. On top of that, 1) he's got his shiny new morphine button, 2) one of the chemo drugs he is on causes drowsiness, and 3) his nausea medication contains Benadryl, so you can imagine how sleepy he is because of all these factors. In spite of this, he is doing pretty well today. He isn't getting many of the severe flu-like symtpoms that the high-dose IL2 treatment caused. This is probably because the dose of IL2 is much lower now and the nurses have been doing a great job staying on top of pain and adverse symptom management.

Once the anemia has improved, he should get a bit more energy back which will be great. He is also working with physical therapy to try to gain strength in his leg and improve his walking ability. We were worried this morning about his kidney function because his creatinine levels started to creep up again. The chemo drug Cisplatin can cause kidney impairment that does not improve when treatment stops which is a bit scary. He is being closely monitored and with the help of some dopamine and large amount of IV fluids, it looks like the kidneys are improving. Unfortunately he is getting very swollen from all of the fluids he is receiving which can be uncomfortable. (luckily he's got the morphine button for that)

All in all, this week has gone much better that we had predicted. It looks like he should be able to successfully complete the full 5 days of chemo. Unfortunately, during his two week recovery he has to start radiation in his left eye. At least this is an outpatient procedure but there are some risks involved and we were told that the wait time can be long in the radiation department, so we will still be spending quite a bit of time at the hospital. It will all be well worth it when the tumors start to shrink. We are all staying very positive and Jason has been showing amazing strength (when he is not asleep).

Debby