Daily Shots, City of Hope and Bandage Changes... Oh, My!

J's been home a week and I've been telling him that he needs to work on this post but since he worked all week on my computer when he was feeling up to it I guess I'll do it for him.... J's doing pretty good. He seemed to get over things a little bit quicker this round and is working from home this week. He is still neutripinic (low white count) and can continue to drop his whites up to 2 weeks after chemo. Every time he steps outside of the house he is to wear a mask especially if it is windy outside so needless to say we have been staying inside and away from people for the last week.

City of Hope
This is were J's next 2 rounds of chemo will be. They are called Stem Cell Chemo. He will be hooked up to a machine similar to a dialysis machine where they will extract his stem cells and collect enough for the 2 rounds that he will be doing. He will sit there hooked up to the machine for up to 6-8 hrs over a period of a couple of days depending on how much they can extract at a time. He should be starting this process sometime this week as long as his whites are up and there is a good amount of stem cells built up. He then will have any where from 2-4 weeks before he starts this next phase. He will be in the hospital for 10-12 days. They will completely wipe out his immune system which will make him very sick. The kids will not be able to visit him as he will be confined to his room and so sick he won't be able to move. Anyone that comes in to see him he will have to wear a mask for his own protection from any germs. The chemo should be for about 5 days and the rest of the time is spent giving him some of the stem cells back and building his immune system back up so that he can come back home. The doctors hope to have him home from his 1st round of this chemo by Thanksgiving and his 2nd round by Christmas.



Daily Shots
J has to give himself a daily shot of neupogen. This is to increase the stem cells that are needed to be extracted for the next stage of this chemo. We decided to go with the whole stem cell chemo because although the Salvage Chemo has a good shot of curing J the Stem Cell Chemo gives him a 15-20% better chance of curing him for good. J gives himself this shot every morning and C sits next to him and watches him as he fills up the shot and injects it into his belly. These shots give him some serious headaches and bone pain because they are doing their job: building stem cells. He can't take regular meds like Tylenol but is on heavy narcotics. Not his choice but the only thing he is allowed to take.

Bandage Changes

I am now officially the Caregiver to J... I'm solely responsible for making sure on a daily basis that his new PICC line (which now includes three lines and is much closer to the aorta) is flushed with Heparin everyday and on Sundays and Wednesdays his caps are changed (the blue things) and once a week that his bandage is changed. This means some serious sterile mask and glove wearing going on. I think I'm more nervous about keeping everything sterile the whole time I'm changing his bandage. I was supposed to practice the bandage change on Friday on Chester (the dummy) but since J's bandage needed to be changed due to having blood under it, I was the one who had to do it. I was so nervous... the nurse said the hardest part is getting the gloves on without contaminating them; otherwise you start all over again putting the dang things on again. J and the nurse said I did a really good job for my first time and J says that's because I'm a scrapbooker and so meticulous. I just think its cause I didn't want to screw up. Once J has started collecting (stem cells) I have a special caregiver class that I will be going to. They will give me a huge book that goes over everything I have to do to the house to make it safe for J to come home to. The class is for 2.5 hours! That is a lot of info...

Please continue to pray that J's whites/stem cells will continue to increase so that they are able to collect enough and maybe more than what they need this week. Thanks for the love and support. We really appreciate everyone and all you do for us.

Also a special thank you to the Heywood’s for sending that awesome package. The kids loved it. It was like Christmas to them and got them so excited for Halloween. We were able to open it up with Jeff at the hospital that last Friday 9/19. Thank you so much!