October 25, 2010 in Uncategorized with 14 Comments

Gray began his second round of chemo this morning. This is the first time he’s done outpatient chemo. This round is five consecutive days. Each day lasts about six hours and then we are allowed to go home only to come back to the hospital the next morning and do it all over again. Today was a bit rough. When we first arrived, they had to prick Gray’s finger to check his blood levels one last time before beginning this round of chemo treatments. Thankfully, his levels were good! Then the nurses had to penetrate his port in order to begin the treatment. Gray has a permanent port placed in his chest under the skin. They remove the external portion of the port each time we leave the hospital so that Gray isn’t at risk of pulling on it or getting an infection in the port. That part of the removable port is a blessing, the bad part is that he has to be stuck each time he begins a new round of chemo. As the nurse prepared to penetrate Gray’s port, I told her that we may need help in holding Gray down but she thought we should try it with Gray just sitting on my lap. I knew, as his mom, that this wasn’t going to go well but didn’t want to argue with her. Well, as soon as Gray saw the nurse holding the needle he freaked out. He threw himself backwards and screamed at the top of his lungs! Needless to say, reinforcements were called in. We were eventually able to get Gray’s port in working order and his chemo treatment began. We sat with him most of the day only taking a break for lunch, in the hospital cafeteria, while Noni and Papa entertained Grayson. A fun “craft nurse” even came by and helped Gray make some little pipe cleaner spiders! He loved it! In fact, he didn’t want her to leave! Before we could go home they had to draw even more blood from Gray. When Grayson was first diagnosed we signed him up for a medical trial and so today’s blood withdraw was to begin the study. By this point, Grayson was DONE. He did not want another nurse to come near him. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take this second blood sample from his port since it was contaminated with chemo…so, they had to stick him in his arm. After bribing him with a sucker, Gray survived the blood withdraw and we were allowed to go home. The nurse did make sure we had enough nausea medicine for Grayson as they are concerned he may have side effects from his chemo. Even though he didn’t have any, besides hair loss, after the first round we were told he could still experience other side effects at any time. We were also told today that after this round of chemo they will do all of Gray’s bone scans and cat scans again to see how he is reacting to the chemo. We will find out at that time if his tumor is shrinking. While we are eager for the results we are also very nervous. We almost don’t want to know. Also, after this round of chemo the doctors will harvest Grayson’s bone marrow. We have SO many questions surrounding the harvesting of the bone marrow. Whew. Today seemed like a whirlwind of big medical words, tons of information and never ending pokes and prods. It’s almost hard to fathom that the same thing will consume tomorrow, the next day, the next day and the day after that! It seems so ironic to willfully hand over our baby boy and have an awful, poisonous drug injected into his body…but we want to and will do anything to help Gray feel better. It’ll never be easy, though. Sigh. Please continue to pray for our little Grayson and for our family as well. We truly don’t want Gray to experience any side effects from his treatments. He doesn’t need anything else added to his plate. Our family needs rest, patience, understanding and peace especially during this next week. Please pray that we are able to communicate with the doctors in a way we will understand and that when we are home from the hospital we can enjoy our family time and continue to make memories together. We don’t want stress or exhaustion to take over our home.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  -Matthew 11:28-30