Chemo round 1...

Brian has been very tired and isn't able to do much. Just walking to the bathroom wears him out. You wouldn't think an everday activity like taking a shower would be so overwhelming. It is for someone going through chemo thereapy, and on constant pain medication.


Brian is back in the hospital. He reached day 10 of the Chemo regimen and was supposed to start the addditional medication that day. He didn't make it. Wednesday 4/14/10, he didn't eat much at all. I think he had a bowl of cereal and I couldn't get him to eat when I got home from work. On Thursday, he had some pizza in the morning, and slept the rest of the day. He woke up around 2pm and took his daily nausea and pain cocktail but was unable to take his Chemo. By 10 pm when it was time to take the cocktail again and prep for the chemo he was really feeling sick. He had not eaten anything since 2pm and when he tried to have some toast he was not able to keep it down.He tried to take the cocktail around 11:30 and finish his toast but by 12:30am it came back up. So off to the hospital we went.


We arrived at the hospital around 1:00am. The ER Doc did a CT scan, I am still waiting on the results of that. The Dr.'s want Brian's Oncologist Dr. Thomas to give us those results. It bothers me that I have to wait until Monday to get this information.


Around 4am the Doc's decided to keep Brian in the hospital for observation since he wasn't able to keep anything down, and he was still in a lot of pain. At 8 am when they still hadn't taken him to his room I went home to get some rest. It wasn't until around 5 pm that they finally got him into his own room. It's great in the fact that it is on the Oncology floor, and he has no roomates, but I wish he was home.


When I went back to the hospital to be with him I took him some dinner, and we were able to talk for a while. They brought in his pain and nausea cocktail, and that was lights out for Brian. I was so tired, and he was too so we both slept there in his room. Me in the recliner and him in that damn hospital bed. Around 8:30 I said goodnight and went home to get some rest.


Brian called me at 5:30 in the morning and he was not the same person. He was on so much medication that he couldn't stay awake on the phone to talk to me. I was a lot worried and he was too. He said he felt out of control and was having a hard time talking and understanding people. When I got to the hospital around 11:30 he was very distraught. He said several people had come in to talk to him and he didn't know what they were saying and didn't know what he had told them. I called the nurse in to talk to her and find out what they had him on. It turns out that they had upped his pain medications to 2MG of one and 80 MG of the other, in addition they were giving him Fenagrin for nausea all 3 times a day . WAY TOO MUCH!! He was so out of it he could barely talk, he couldn't eat as he was never awake when the food came. I asked the nurse to call the Dr.


She came back and said that the Dr. had already gone to another hospital but that they could give him his anti anxiety medication. I thought great, another thing to make him sleep.... About 30 minutes later Dr. Nasrulah, the one who admitted Brian, came in and when I told him about how Brian was feeling he went out and reviewed the chart. He agreed that they had put Brian on WAY TOO MUCH pain meds and reduced the the one medication down to 40MG, and changed it to twice a day.


Brian was barely able to eat dinner last night. He was so out of it that when he tried to eat he was either falling backwards or trying to dip his face in his plate. I tried to help, but then he was not chewing the food or swallowing. He was just sitting there asleep with the food in his mouth. He would take the fork from me and try to feed himself. It must have been good hospital food. He did finally finish and swallow all of his dinner, and then he laid down and went to sleep. I left around 6:30 to come home and take care of Charlie.


When I left I wasn't sure if he knew I was leaving and that really bothered me. I didn't want him to think I just left without saying goodbye. It's really hard to leave him there and come home to the house without him. I don't mind being here alone, but only when I know he is at work or out doing something fun. Not when he is laying in a hospital bed alone.


When I talked to Brian this morning he said that he had been running  a fever of about 101 during the night and is now on antibiotics. He sounded more like himself but still groggy from the medication. I'm worried about the fever. The last thing we need right now is an infection.


I wish I could tell who is winning this round. Chemo or Cancer...