Donnie has been doing really good lately.
He had a post hospital check-up on Monday with his Oncologist and it went well. Dr. Zhou said that all of his blood work looks well and that he never turned Neutropenic, which is great! Donnie seems like he is responding well to treatment; his lumps in his neck you can barely feel and his face is in a lot less pain. He will have to still do 6 cycles of this treatment, one every 21 days. So from the first day of the last chemo cycle till the first day of the next one is how they calculate the 21 days. So it kinda works out as 10 days at the hospital, 10 days home, 10 days at the hospital, 10 days home and so on for 6 times. It feels a little overwhelming but if it makes him better, what's 5 months out of our life?! Even though it feels like we've been dealing with this forever. After the 2nd cycle he will have a PET scan to see how much progress he has made. He can't get that soon enough, we want to compare so badly his last one to that one. We like to hope that it's helping but until you see it in black and white, it's hard to trust that it is! Today, he went in to have a Port placed in him. It's a minor surgery but he did have to be put under to have it done. A Port, is a like a small catheter, that is placed under the skin right under the collar bone. It is connected to a vein so that it's easier for receiving chemo and taking blood. Most cancer patients get them because they get poked so much, so this eliminates some of that discomfort. The nurse can do everything she need right through there, plus it leaves their hands and arms free of needles and tubes. Donnie was poked so often at the hospital, that he had track marks and bruising all up this arms. I mean he was getting blood taken twice a day and he had to have his tubing changed every 3 days, so it was a lot. They gave him a PICC line midway through the last cycle, which is kinda the same as a port but more temporary and way more annoying, because that is placed on the inside of the arm. They removed it when he was discharged so this was the next step for something more permanent.
Other than all of that, Donnie has been doing surprisingly well. For the most part, he is back to himself. He still has a little pain in his face and he sometimes becomes nauseous, but that's about it. He's still skinny as a rail but I can deal with that :) He has been eating pretty good, I've turned into a typical Italian mother, I feel like I'm constantly telling him to eat something. He just needs to keep as much weight on as he can before he goes back again for his next round of chemo. The last time he was there, he left 10 pounds lighter then when he went in.. boo! So he needs to have the 10 pounds to be able to lose for the next time. Speaking of the next time, if all goes as planned he will be back at Mountain View on Wednesday, for his next 10 days. Cycle 2. I'm sure it will feel like Deja Vu but it's one cycle closer to the end and that's what we cannot wait for!
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