For those of you who haven't read it on facebook or twitter, Mom's blood work all looked great yesterday, so she was able (or maybe forced) to get her second round of chemo. Actually, she's still getting it, as one of the drugs infuses over 46 hours. They decreased the dosages of two of her chemo meds and added two new anti-nausea meds, all in an effort to manage this chemo's horrible side effects. She's wearing an anti-nausea patch (Sancuso patch) that administers medication continuously for 7 days. And she's taking phenergan and zofran around the clock, even setting her alarm to wake up and take meds every 3 hours at night. Hopefully these changes will make a difference!
We had a little bit of a scare during Mom's infusion yesterday when she started to have slurred speech and muscle twitching. Her nurse had never seen it before and called the nurse practitioner, who checked Mom out and made sure she wasn't having a stroke. She wasn't. It's just a rare reaction from one of the medicines (irinotecan-induced dysarthria) and it goes away a few hours after the infusion's finished. It actually happened last time, too, but it was right after she'd had a drink of iced tea. We attributed it to her extreme sensitivity to cold things (also a side effect of chemo). I googled it anyway, though, and had seen that irinotecan can cause slurred speech . . . which is the only reason I didn't freak out when it happened yesterday. It resolved after a few hours.
How's she doing tonight? Well, she feels kind of "chemo-ish" . . . just kind of feeling bad in general. Very fatigued, not hungry, not thirsty. She had one short episode of nausea this afternoon, but none before or since and she has not thrown up! Things started to get bad on day 3 after chemo last time, so tomorrow will be the real test - pray for a good day! Regardless of how tomorrow goes, we've got home health coming with IV fluids for at least a couple days. Even if she doesn't throw up at all this round, she could still use the extra fluids since she's not drinking much.
On Monday, Mom will get a shot to boost her white blood cell production to help prevent the dramatic drop that occurred after round 1. Because this sends the bone marrow into overdrive, it can cause bad bone pain. Pray Trish will be spared of that.
In other news, Tekia is in Orlando with her cheerleading squad and was shocked tonight when her dad showed up for their parent meeting! After her trip got off to a rough start, Dad looked into flying down there for the weekend and realized he and Mom together had enough frequent flyer miles to get a round-trip ticket. Actually accessing those miles was a major ordeal, but we finally got it worked out and Dad was able to surprise Tekia tonight. :) God provided everything from plane tickets to a place to stay. Dad will be there to see her compete tomorrow and will stay to fly back with her on Tuesday. Tekia's team competed once this afternoon and Mom and I were able to watch it live online. They did great and are currently in 1st place for their division!
Tonight's prayer requests . . .
- Send up some prayers of thanksgiving for answered prayers from last week! Dr. Tauer is doing well after surgery . . . Kia's Orlando trip has taken a turn for the better and we all feel better now that her dad is there . . . Mom was able to have chemo yesterday. :)
- Pray for safety for Tekia and her teammates as they compete and safe travels for them and all their parents as they head home on Tuesday.
- Pray for round 2 of chemo to be hard on cancer cells and much easier on the rest of Mom's body! Pray Mom will have less stomach trouble and more strength and energy.
- Mom will have another scan on the 28th. Pray for no growth and no metastasis (i.e., spreading to other organs) of her cancer! If this goes well, we can schedule surgery in Louisville!
2 comments:
Will be praying! Much love and hugs to all of you!
Always in prayer for Tricia but like how you summarized specifics to pray for.
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