Tomorrow is the big day! Eric enters the hospital and won't leave again for 4 to 6 weeks. It is a bit scary since this is all new to us and it sounds like it will be both challenging and boring. But it is the first step on the road to recovery, so we are grateful that this day has arrived and we know that it will be worth it. Many of you are just as clueless (cancer wise) as we are, so I am going to put down what we know, so far, that will be happening in the next couple of weeks.
August 19, Day -9 Eric is admitted to LDS hospital. They install a central line, which is "a thin flexible tube that is surgically placed into a large vein in the chest that leads to the heart and will have three lumens (or entrances) that will be used for administering fluids, chemotherapy, medications, and blood products." Afterwards Eric will be given an anti-seizure medication, and that is it for the day.
August 20, Day -8 Early in the morning Eric will be given his first dose of heavy chemo. Afterwards blood will be drawn and sent immediately to a lab in Seattle where they will be able to analyze the chemo's effect on Eric's blood and decide the exact dosage that is best for Eric. Pretty amazing.
August 21, Day -7 Rest day (no scheduled medical procedures awaiting Seattle results)
August 22, Day -6 Two types of heavy chemo
August 23, Day -5 Two types of heavy chemo
August 24, Day -4 Two types of heavy chemo
August 25, Day -3 Two types of heavy chemo
August 26, Day -2 Rest day
August 27, Day -1 Rest day
August 28, Day 0 Eric receives the stem cell infusion from his sister Debbie. They call Day 0 your second birthday because you get a second chance at life. At this point Eric will basically not have any functioning bone marrow. That means no immunity to infections, no energy from red blood cells, no ability to form blood clots in case of cuts or bruises. Eric will receive multiple transfusions to keep him going until Debbie's stem cells start to form new bone marrow. (An interesting piece of trivia: Eric is blood type A+ and Debbie is O+. Sometime after the stem cell infusion Eric will become O+.) It takes awhile, so Eric will still be in the hospital for several more weeks until his immune system is strong enough for him to come home.
You can see from the above schedule that there will be a lot of down time. For the first week Eric should be feeling okay, so if you are going to visit, do so in the first five or six days. Just give me a call or text first to see how Eric is doing. (801 699-4152) I will continue to update the blog every few days so that you will know when he is starting to feel better after the stem cell infusion.
Eric's addendum:
I particularly like this quote from John Durham Peters, communications professor, from his book Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communications. It captures from a slightly different angle my current perspective of the last several weeks.
"We are the great exception to the universe, the rare case, the completion of nature, the way the universe comes to self-consciousness. The question should be, then, not how we break through the sludge of habit to rediscover the hidden strangeness of things, but how we ever managed to convince ourselves that anything was not a dissemination of intelligence. Boredom is the amazing achievement, not wonder. Our senses can catch only a narrow portion of the spectrum: the cosmic rays, rainbows above or below the range of visible light or tectonic groans of the earth all elude us. . . . We are immersed in a sea of intelligence that we cannot fully understand or even sense."
I like that quote a lot, Eric. Thank you for sharing that. Good luck these next few months. We're thinking about you two often and hope you know how much we love and support you.
ReplyDeleteYou are both still in our prayers and we will be thinking of you as you jump off the high dive. Love you both.
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