Busy Bee

Conley has already won the hearts of all the staff and even other residents on the oncology floor. We had about 24 hours from when we moved upstairs to when we started chemotherapy and he spent the majority of his time out of the room walking around in his car, playing outside, in the playroom or socializing with everyone.

Jonathan and I spent the morning learning more about his chemotherapy schedule in depth, including when he will receive each medication and what to look for once we are discharged. I found myself saying that we are "lucky" frequently, which is somewhat ironic now that I think about it. One of the biggest side effects of chemotherapy is kidney failure, and a large part of inpatient chemotherapy is focused on hydration for the patient before and after chemo. Well, you guessed it. Since we have nonfunctional kidneys and do not need hydration (actually that would be bad for him since he has no way to expel it besides dialysis), that generally works in our favor. That being said, the doctors are convinced that it is highly possible for Conley to all of his chemotherapy treatments on a outpatient basis! They have never done that, but they do not see why we couldn't, especially since we are well versed medical parents by now :) There will likely be many other reasons for hospitalization such as fever, infection and transfusions, so it would be nice to avoid any scheduled ones if possible.

Conley started his chemotherapy yesterday. We haven't seen too many side effects yet, but they say it takes about 48 hours to settle in the body. As I mentioned, he will receive three different medications. They also preventatively give him several antinausea medications. His chemotherapy schedule will be laid out like this: At the beginning of the cycle on Thursdays, he will receive a three hour infusion of Cisplatin (which was dropped down from 6 hours given his lack of renal function - score; another "lucky") and Fridays will require hemodialysis in the morning to remove excess fluid, followed by two different chemotherapy medications (Vincristine and Fluorouracil) given as a slow push medication  (i.e. syringe) over minutes. For the next two weeks, he will receive one medication (Vincristine) as a slow push on Friday hopefully as an outpatient. This cycle is done every 3 weeks for 4 cycles. So, 12 weeks total. Got it?! :) In the bigger picture of cancer and chemotherapy, this is a very small time frame (12 weeks), amount of medication and time spent transfusing the medications. But, obviously combined with all his other medical issues, settling on a schedule for all his treatments will be very important since they are all time or day specific. For example, he cannot do chemotherapy before dialysis, or all the medication will be sucked out by the machine. All in all, things seems to be falling into place and we are so thankful for our team of specialists.