New Phase Starts

On Thursday, we took Trey in again to Primary Children's. He had a nice two week break. When we got there, he said "I kinda missed being here." Crazy kid. He must of just missed seeing all the wonderful nurses and doctors!

This new phase is called Standard Interim Maintenance. The doctor said it is pretty intense. He will go every 10 days to the hospital for chemo treatments. Trey will get a dose of Vincristine, which he had in the first phase. He will also get a drug called Methotrexate (MTX). He has received this treatment through the lumbar puncture, but never directly into the blood stream. Each time he goes back the MTX will be increased in dosage amounts. The major side effect is that his counts will go down. Once his counts reach a certain level, the doses will not be increased. They don't want his counts to get too low.

The day prior to him going to get the chemo, we have a home health nurse come and draw blood for his counts. The treatments are count dependant, and if his are too low, they don't want to give him the chemo.

This last nurse that we had was a bit confused and didn't seem to know what he was doing. One of the most important things you have to do when deacessing the port is to flush with heparin. Heparin helps prevent the blood from clotting in the port. Well this nurse didn't do that because he said he couldn't find it and said saline would work just as well. Shane and I didn't think that was right and when we asked the nurses at the hospital about it, they said it was a huge no no. We thought about just going to the hospital to have the blood drawn, but found out they wouldn't access his port and he would have to be stuck with a needle. That would defeat the purpose of getting the port, so he wouldn't get poked with lots of needles.

We asked to have a different nurse come the next time. The home health agency was very accommodating and we appreciated that. This experience just reaffirmed to me that as a parent I really have to know whats going on with Trey's medical care. Just because they are professionals doesn't mean they know everything and do everything right. This was a learning experience for me.

His doctor said Trey can still do his normal day to day things and be around people. He said he will let us know when and if Trey's counts get to the point that he won't be able to go out. So for now we continue to let him ride his bike, play at friends' house and have friends over. It's not all fun for him though. He still has homework and reading to do and he still has chores. We want him to still be responsible and learn how to do things. :)

Again we want to extend a thank you for the continued prayers and love. We are so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives. It would be horrible to walk through life alone-that's why the Lord gave us such wonderful blessings as friends and family!