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Chemotherapy Cycle 2




After chemo cycle 1 had finished we treated ourselves to a very quiet Christmas at home. It was lovely to have three whole weeks without a hospital stay. I barely knew what to do with myself. Pre-cycle 2 hydration was planned for Tuesday 3 January 2017, where Ryan and I met with his paediatric consultant Dr C for a progress update. Which was very positive and encouraging. Chemotherapy cycle 2 then began as planned on Wednesday 4 January 2017 with the same SMILE protocol as detailed in our separate post. 

Day 1 went like this: Ryan started Methotrexate at 9:30am. He then fell asleep at 11am and slept until 7pm. Resulting in a very boring day for me. I helped the youth worker to take down all the Christmas decorations from the ward. I went for a walk around the pond on the hospital grounds. I met with the Gastro Nurse and then the dietitian but neither of those meetings took very long. Overall a thumb-twiddling day, but thankfully no sickness for Ryan. To be fair I could perhaps have helped to sort his PEG feeds out, but it was rather nice to have a week off from my 'nursing' duties and instead I get to just be mum. 

This second round of chemotherapy, however, did not go quite as smoothly as the first. Ryan had a mild, grade 1 reaction to the Ifosfamide drug on Thursday (day 2) which was picked up amazingly quickly by the wonderful nurse looking after him and promptly treated with Methylene Blue. This will now have to be give as a prophylaxis on all future cycles. 

His blood levels dropped too low, much more quickly than the first chemo cycle, but he started with the GCSF injections as before and fortunately did not become febrile neutropenic, as we had feared. He did, however, suffer much more with the sickness and struggled with his PEG feeding. Although on day 16 he did eat 2 Dairylea Dunker tubes. For those that know Ryan, he has not eaten any solid food since October 2016, so this was a huge milestone in his treatment progress.

How Methylene Blue gets its name...

Comments

  1. Anon23 February 2017 at 00:59

    You use a lot of medical words I am not familiar with - I reckon you would find it a breeze to now qualify as a Doctor!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @SarahLou23 February 2017 at 07:04

    Do you want me to clarify anything. Sorry if I have caused any confusion. I would like our blog to read as easily as possible. I don't wish for it to be a complicated read. x

    ReplyDelete

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