Brody stayed awake again for his radiation therapy yesterday but he was difficult and the staff at the hospital have to get the things out to start accessing his port before he will agree to stay still actually go through with the radiation therapy-- this is kind of a trick he uses on Mom and Dad to be difficult... he will refuse to take an oral med until we go to get the syringe to squirt it in his mouth... he will usually take it before we get back with it... does the same thing for the nystatin (swish and spit)-- we have to go get the swabs before he will do it....
Because of this they will be keeping him with the early morning appointment with an anestesiologist there just in case... as if there is difficulty with him later in the day it will throw off the schedule for other patients getting their therapy.
They did write a prescription for versed-- this drug produces a sleepy effect and also is for anti anxiety-- it also will produce a short term amnesia effect so he likely won't remember the procedure.
Anyway, he did earn another Thomas train yesterday for "finally" doing well.... I got to watch him do it over a monitor for the first time and he did really good... just moved his eyes and his mouth a bit-- the entire radiation session (after they get started) lasts less then 10 minutes.... I imagine it is scary to a child with all these big things moving around him with nobody else in the room with him... I was very proud of him for doing so well.
They radiation oncologist finished planning out his therapy several days ago and Trish just told me yesterday that they will only be doing 23 sessions total (rather then the original 30-- 6 weeks, 5 days a week)... with 5 down he has 18 left to do... will finish up if all goes as planned on August 11th.
We do have some bad news though... apparently to fully treat the tumor "bed" they will severely have to radiate his left kidney-- because of this they expect him to lose about 80% of the kidney function in this kidney-- a person can live with just one kidney-- but we obviously don't want to lose function in his only spare for his right one..
Really thats about it... we have been pushing zofran (anti nausea medicine) on him all week but he hasn't seemed to really need it... we missed a dose here and there and he seems to feel fine... apparently the nausea effects will get worse with the more sessions he has... hopefully it won't be too hard on him. Other then the referred pain in his leg, he seems to be in good spirits most of the time and has been having fun getting spoiled.
Just when you think Brody couldn't be any more brave he proves you wrong. The kid is truly amazing. It reminds me of the story about how a man looked back on his life and it was like a walk on the beach. He saw two sets of foot prints, one set his, one set Jesus. However, at a difficult point in his life he only saw one pair of foot prints... and he thought I wonder why Jesus left me during those times? Jesus tells him "I never left you son, those were the times when I was carrying you on my back." God loves us so much, even when we don't understand or cant' see it. His strength will always be enough.
ReplyDeleteLove you guys and praying that his kidney doesn't take too much of a beating!