Well, we ended up delaying the final round of MTX for Cycle 5 until Sunday, instead of starting on Friday, because there was a baseball game that Eli wanted to go to and he said he had to be there, so we requested to delay a day and check in the following morning. However, the game resulted in a win and that meant playing a possible two games on Saturday and Eli again begged me to call the doctor first thing Saturday morning. So, we now had plans to check in on Sunday morning.
Before we went back in for treatment, Eli had a really great week. He told me that he had just been so happy. He was playing games online with his friends, laughing, joking, going to baseball games and feeling like his old self.
His eyes started to get really irritated at the game on Saturday - they were incredibly red, itchy and watery. The weather was gorgeous for the first game - sunny with a slight breeze and it had been a while since we had been able to enjoy some good weather. There was rain in the forecast and sure enough, the second game got windy and stormy. Little did we know that MTX causes photosensitivity and my arm got red and Eli was a little pink when he got home that night. In addition to his irritated eyes, he told me he thought he might catching something because he had a runny nose and a little cough. Sunday morning I woke him up and he told me to call and postpone again. I wish! So we headed to the hospital.
When we got to the unit, his eyes were still a mess and the doctor assessed him and gave him some Benadryl to calm down the allergies, thinking that it sounded like hay fever, but after treatment later that day, he got a fever and they ran a respiratory panel and he tested positive for one of the original coronaviruses that circulates every year.
When we are in-patient, we take walks out of the unit and down the hall and sit in a couple of chairs before we head back. His appetite was really great and he didn't have any nausea AT ALL. I think this was the first time in a while that he didn't feel gross. He played a few games of Uno and charades.
You can see his neck is slightly pink in this photo, which was the beginning of his sunburn. He ended up with a pretty red sunburn on his neck and forearm that didn't develop until about 3 days later and continued to get worse. I was afraid it was going to blister, but a ton of aloe seemed to help. He cleared really really slowly, in fact, the slowest he's cleared yet, so we didn't get to leave until late afternoon on Thursday, but it was so nice to get in the car and speed away.
We spent a quiet day at home on Mother's Day and played some indoor Jenga. We got the tower pretty tall before I knocked it over.
On Monday morning, we headed to clinic to begin the last cycle and returned Tuesday for Day 2. He felt a little crummy Tuesday evening, but started feeling better by Wednesday and his appetite and nausea have been great.
Thursday he got to go back to PT, which was such a great session. It's been several weeks since we've been able to make it due to treatment, low counts and unexpected hospital stays. He really loves getting in the pool and moving about freely without restraint or crutches. He even got to "run" a little.
He hopes to spend a lot of time in the pool this summer. He will have to be extra diligent all summer long because of the chemo and risk of sunburn.
This time around he is getting neopogen injections to keep his counts from dropping to a neutropenic level. The neopogen is a synthetic form of Granulocycte Colony Stimulated Factor (G-CSF), which natural occurs in the body and helps stimulate the bone marrow to produce neutrophils. He gets these shots once daily. We have a little bit of a break before we have to go back on May 26 for the second to last round! We are thisclose.