Two

Happy Independence Day! I hope you all had a wonderful day today wherever you may be in the world.

We are home from David's second round of chemo. Things didn't go as smoothly as planned, but we made it through and can cross this one off the list.

We arrived at the hospital on Thursday around noon, but didn't get to our hospital room until nearly 5pm. That seems to be the magical time for us. Even though our chemo meds were ready when we got there, we were not able to start. The doctors wanted some emergency medications to be in hand since David had such a scary reaction last time, and it took several more hours for those medications to arrive from the pharmacy. Then...the nurses were changing shifts, so we had to wait awhile longer. It was about 9:30pm when we were finally able to start.

David was about 40 minutes into his second medication when he began to have another reaction. It was similar to the reaction that he'd had last time, but milder and much slower progressing. They again stopped his chemo with about 7 minutes remaining in his infusion, gave him benadryl, and we waited. Rob talked to several of the higher up docs on the phone and it was decided to continue with the next medication. The meds are really designed to work in conjunction with each other, so it was important for him to get the next medication if at all possible. Needless to say, we were all very nervous and shaky. We started the third medicine around 12:30am and finished around 1:30am with no problems. David slept peacefully during the night, but Rob and I slept very fitfully.

Then next morning, we talked at length with two of the head docs, and we couldn't determine why David had this second reaction. It was to a different medication than last time, and it was very strange in timing. So, they recommended that we go ahead and run the chemo as prescribed for that day, but give David benadryl before anything started. We weren't able to start chemo until around 4pm, so the rest of the day was very nerve wracking for Rob and I. Our favorite nurse was there yesterday and she ran his chemo and just stayed in the room with us for the whole 2 hours with emergency medication on hand. It was uneventful, and for that we praise God. We were able to leave around 7:30pm, and made it as far as Rob's grandparent's house in Greensboro where we just crashed for the night. Rob, David, and I slept until after 10am this morning. I haven't done that in years, but it was a nice rest.

David has been happy and normal today. He is paler than his normal self, but that is to be expected. What is left of his hair is falling out in gobs right now, and I feel like he'll be 100% bald before we go back for another treatment.

After David's counts recover, we'll be headed over to radiology for a mapping session. Then we will start 3-4 weeks of radiation treatments. The treatments will be daily treatments Monday through Friday each week. This is the part that I am most nervous about since the side effects are quite scary. I am praying that God will calm us and keep David still during treatments so that the radiation will only hit where it's supposed to. I'll let you all know when that is about to begin.

Thanks again for all your prayers. We feel the need for them more and more each time we go.

-Kim