Preparing for Tofurkey Day

As Terry mentioned yesterday, we escaped the hospital...barely. Jason was nauseated first thing in the morning when the nurse was in the room. She told the doctor that she didn't think Jason was ready to leave. Luckily, we had everyone already convinced that we were going to be leaving Sunday. When the nurse practitioner came in, Jason was seated in a chair with a smile on his face watching television. He had his game face on and it worked...we got our freedom! We also managed to aquire an increased and more effective dose of pain killers and new nausea medicine to try out during his recovery period to make it as enjoyable as possible.

Today was Tofurkey preparation day. Marjorie came home with an SUV full of groceries. Boy I hope Jason will have his appetite ready for Thursday! Jason spent most of the day asleep, but this is a good thing. We have both been sleep deprived for a week, so it is definitely nice to catch up on some ZZZZs. We also gave him a dose of Lasik to try to get some more of the water weight off. I'm not sure how effective it was. It works a lot better when given through IV at the hospital. They must be using a much larger dose. So for now we are letting Jason rest and trying to feed him mini meals all day long so as not to upset his stomach. Later this week, we will really focus on trying to help him get his strength back. He says he is feeling very weak and it is a battle for him to make it up the stairs each night.

Jason has a lot of distension (looks like beer belly but isn't) from the cancer in his liver. The full belly doesn't allow him to eat much at any one time. The doctor kept talking about tapping it off. He kept bringing it up everyday...he wants to tap Jason like a keg of beer. I guess this involves using ultrasound and a large needle to pull water from the ascites. This doesn't sound fun. The problem is, he will just fill right back up with water when he gets IV fluids during the next round of chemo. We might consider doing this procedure after he has finished his final dose of biochemotherapy because the results might last longer.

One interesting thing that happened yesterday when we were leaving the hospital is we ran into the nephrologist that treated Jason when he had kidney failure due to the high dose Interleukin treatment. He told us that because of Jason, they started a program at MD Anderson to study Interleukin and its affects on the kidneys. Hopefully someday they will be able to better protect patient's kidneys when giving this kind of therapy. It was cool that this was started because of their experience with Jason.

Well, that's all I have to write for tonight. We go into the hospital tomorrow for blood work and the rest of the day we will play by ear depending on how Jason is feeling. Marjorie and I might make a quick trip to Target to pick up some last minute Thanksgiving items. We miss everyone. And we are glad to be back at the townhouse!