Chemo treatment #1 down - 18 more to go

Busy, busy day today. First things first. I braved taking all three of my other munchkins into the Pediatrician's office today to receive the h1n1 vaccination. Since Isaac is going through Chemo, the very last thing we need is for him to get sick - especially with the h1n1 virus. Isaac had his vaccination yesterday at the Oncologist's. Dr. Esparza, Isaac's primary Oncologist highly recommended it, so I took his advice whole heartedly. Oh, boy, oh boy. The joy! They all seemed okay with the fact - they even had the order of who was getting it first, second and third... but when they lady actually came in with the shots, they all flipped! Here I am, with Isaac, trying to calm them down. Alexis refused to sit on the exam table, Izabella was shaking and Sheldon kep telling me, "Why you making me do this!". I felt horrible. All is better now, thanks to McDonald's $1 sundaes. (But, we have to go back for a booster in 1-month. Wish me luck!)

On to Isaac's Chemo...

We applied them EMLA cream at 12:15 p.m., and we were out of the house by 12:25 p.m.


We arrived at CHOC's OPI unit at 1:10 p.m., a little early for our 1:30 p.m. appointment. They weighed little man (9.65 kg) and immediately put us in a room - thank you, isolation! (He is isolated because he tested + for MRSA).

The nurse comes in and takes his vitals:
BP - 116/60
Temp - 36.6 C

She leaves, and comes back with a boatload of snacks, that soon enough, ended up crunched all over the floor. We sit and wait, watching a little TLC on the T.V.



A little bit later Dr. Shen comes in to do a quick check, and before we knew it, another nurse came in with a little box of Chemo goodies. Being the paranoid Mom that I am, I made her show me how they got the dose amount, and she also showed me the syringes with the same dosage. Hey, you never know... She proceeds to access his port, and he let out a little whine. It's hard to tell if he is actually in pain, or just a little ticked off because I have to hold his tiny arms so he does not try to yank out the needle. It seemed like she used a gazillion syringes full of stuff, but each time she uses a different med, she has to flush his port with saline. She first gave him the Zofran for nausea. Then came the Dactinomycin (which we will call "A"). The A is red. They call it the red devil. This is the medication that has the most side effects - the one that will make him nauseated. After that was the Vincristine (which we will call "V"). Following that, was the Heparin to keep his port from clogging up. He got really squirmy, and it was making me so nervous. Imagine an 8-month-old, squirming like a little worm, with a nice size needle just hanging out of his chest. They do not gauze it down because the total time from start to finish is actually less than 10 minutes. We just had to hang tight, and Mommy gritted her teeth. Finally, we are done, and she tops him off with a Spiderman bandaid. Thanks to Mr. Squirmy Wormie, the 10 minutes that it took to administer the medications, seemed like 30 minutes.

He has been awesome since then. No side effects to report. He devoured all his dinner, and has been playing like normal. They do say that it can take up to 3 cycles to start feeling the effects, and his hair will start to fall out between week 2 and 3 as well. Isaac's hair is just starting to become curly, so I will be really sad to see it go... but... it will grow back.