Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Consolidation Cycle #2 of 3 Started

Liam's fever has stayed away now for 24 hours, so the next cycle of chemo started this afternoon.

The doctors have to balance making sure Liam is healthy enough for the high dose chemotherapy, with minimizing the delay of the next cycle.

Today and tomorrow, Liam gets 4 hours of chemo both days. And as we did with consolidation cycle #1, Liam needs baths every 6 hours. I've talked to him about the baths and he is already crying about it, he hasn't even had his first bath yet! The middle of the night baths were the easiest last time, when he was half asleep, he protested less.

The BMT (bone marrow transplant) team will try to organize the stem cell rescue for Friday, but it requires coordination with the "bank", and will depend on the chemo starting on time tomorrow. Ideally, Liam will have the stem cell rescue on Friday, but it could end up being on Monday, as it did last time.

If Liam follows the same pattern as last time, the high dose chemotherapy didn't really hit too hard until a few days following the stem cell rescue day.

Liam also can't have any tape on him (due to the chemo being excreted from his skin), so we have to take out his feeding tube for the next couple of days. Since he got back to the hospital, Liam has not been eating anything by mouth, so here's hoping he gets hungry enough to actually eat something again!

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