Updates on Evan

Monday night.

Posted by: Myra
Date: March 30th, 2009

It's just past 6:30 p.m. and they've been pre-hydrating Evan since about 3 p.m. this afternoon. Trying to get his pH balance to reach 7 (it's 6) and his specific gravity to be 10/10 (it's 10/5), so they can start the chemo. Hopefully in the next hour we'll be there.

Evan had another outbreak of shingles over the weekend. Not as bad as the first time, thankfully.

Praying for an uneventful three-day stay.

 

Cycle #32 starts Monday.

Posted by: Myra
Date: March 27th, 2009

Evan's CBC today showed his counts were all back up. So, we'll head back to the hospital on Monday for a 3-day inpatient chemo treatment.

He's been having some neuropathy issues with his legs, due to the Vincristine. We have some exercises to try to see if we can alleviate the pain and weakness.

We appreciate your continued prayers and good thoughts. Have a great weekend.

 

Windy like the weather today.

Posted by: Myra
Date: March 23rd, 2009

Today was an in-clinic day to check Evan’s counts. All were low, as expected, and his counts will likely continue to drop over the next couple of days before rebounding again. We’ll go back in on Friday to check them again. Evan is still feeling pretty good, somewhat irritable which is a good indicator when his counts are down. As soon as they rebound he always returns to his delightful self.

This week/cycle is #31 and is a built in break from treatment. Next week/cycle #32 is another round of vincristine, doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide. It’s the combination that Evan had a month ago that made him so sick, right before the shingles made their appearance. This will be the last time he will have the very nasty doxorubicin, thank goodness. Another milestone reached.

Looking ahead, week/cycle #33 is an injection of vincristine and the following week is evaluation time -- scans to check the progress we’re making. We continue to pray that with every good cell that’s been destroyed that every bad cancer cell has been obliterated, too.

You might wonder why Evan has to have so many different chemo drugs, well, they all do something different. The clinical studies have shown that in combination these drugs tend to work better on Rhabdo than when used alone. Just to give you an example: vincristine disrupts cancer cell division and blocks enzymes needed for new growth, cyclophosphamide damages the DNA of cancer cells, irinotecan interferes with replication cancer enzymes. The list goes on, but you get the picture.

There’s a lifetime dose limit to a lot of these drugs. Once Evan has reached it he can’t ever have them again. So we need them to do their job!! Please keep our boy in your prayers.

Updates within the Update: Evan's been working with the TheraBite, slow going but we have hope it will work. The infamous pecking bird has stopped!!

 

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | NEXT