Week 30

Brody continued his treatment on schedule this week. He was admitted on Monday and received his 3 drug chemo combo and stayed the night at the hospital with Dad. He did have a bit of a problem with nausea and vomited twice about an hour before he was due for his next zofran (anti nausea medicine) dose each time. It did not persist too much into Tuesday although he didn’t have much of an appetite that day. He did give us a bit of a scare while at the hospital  when he got a pretty good fever on Tuesday… it lasted about 4 hours or so and then went away as quickly as it appeared. We are supposed to take him to the hospital if he ever gets a fever above 101.5 and he was above this—he did leave the hospital on Tuesday night about 9:15 pm (we thought he might have to stay that night too)… we checked him every 2 to 3 hours the next 24 hours and it did not return (and he didn’t get any meds to mask it – Tylenol/motrin/asprin). We are very paranoid about germs around him and have no idea what was up with the fever that came and went so fast.

His appetite has not returned as fast as in previous weeks so we will see how this plays out… he had been eating pretty good the last 2 weeks before the last chemo dose and had been gaining some weight back.

He continues his treatment on Monday (week 31) with labs (and blood likely again), and his 1 chemo drug of Vincristine….

He will get Vincristine each week now till week 36 (3 drug combo on week 33 and 36) and then his final chemo dose will be week 39 (3 drug combo).

He will come in for labs at least once per week til week 42--- when he is supposed to be evaluated again.

I’m sure Brody will be very happy when Mom and Dad stop pestering him to take his oral meds anywhere from 3 to 10 times a day… (depending on where he is in his cycle of treatment).

The other 2 boys are doing pretty well too…. Homeschooling can be difficult at times but both Geordi and Jaden seem to be doing pretty well in their school work. As we mentioned previously, we withdrew the boys from the online school they were attending—while the curriculum was ok, we felt there was a fair amount of fluff and they were wasting time on stuff that was too easy and the boys seemed relatively bored with it.

Mom and our neighbor Barbie who has been helping a lot came up with a pretty good curriculum… Jaden’s reading skills are really picking up and he is already pretty good at sounding out a lot of words and is keeping up on his schedule of learning his site words. He has been doing well in his math too.

Geordi was already a good reader and good at math and we feel he is now being challenged in his curriculum and (most of the time) having more fun. He has been learning his times tables and making good progress. He does need to work on his writing skills somewhat. He can write pretty well but just doesn’t like doing it—the hard part is getting him to think of things to write…. He had a pretty easy time a few days ago writing about how he doesn’t like to write.

We do utilize a few web sites –

Raz-kids.com (was used in the online school the boys were attending)—it is a good reading site that we signed up for a personal subscription.

IXL.com—is a pretty good math site… it covers everything and also has skills organized by individual state standards… it could use some organizing.

Spellingcity.com – this is actually being used by the 2^nd grade at Whitehouse Elementary school where the kids will attend. The mom of a kid who was in Geordi’s class the last 2 years told me about it and I was able to get to his spelling word lists—it has spelling workd games and can test him too… in addition I was able to join the site for free and create my own lists for Jaden… So we have been putting all his site words on their too.

Our other bit of news is that Geordi got his cast off his broken arm a few weeks ago and had been wearing a brace… he was scared to remove it but finally did and his arm doesn’t seem to be bothering him anymore…

I think that’s it for us…

More later…

Bill