January 15th 2009
Thursday, January 15th, 2009First some great news, we got Andrew’s MRI results back and they said his scans looked good and showed no signs of residual cancer.
Andrew had his first round of chemo cocktail of Cicplatin, CCNU, and Vincristine. Some of the side effects from these are low blood cell (which will happen), hair loss (he is waiting to lose his eye lashes and eye brows), kidney damage, jaw pain, weakness, pain in fingers, and nausea/vomiting or diarrhea. He was admitted on Monday around 1:00 when the fluid administration began. To protect his kidneys they need to hydrate him for quite a few hours. He got this chemo around 10:00 at night and he was up more than once an hour to urinate which was to be expected but made sleeping impossible. The chemo finished at 4:00 in the morning but he had to continue to get fluid for another 10 hours. Luckily the anti-nausea medication they gave him was perfect and Andrew didn’t have any nausea while we were at the hospital. Mind you he only ate a little breakfast early in the morning and nothing the rest of the day, but he was still pleasant as ever. He was very gassy today and a little fatigued but other than that he is doing very well. We have been incredibly grateful for his low side effects thus far, and are taking things one day at time.
Andrew has taken all of this with such grace and with such a positive attitude it has made me see that there are angels here on Earth. Andrew will almost never admit that he does not feel well, is in pain, or needs anything. He almost always meets everyone with a smile no matter what time of day. He still loves cuddling, doing well on his school work, playing with his cousins, and beating up his sister. We try to live as normal as we can, and funny enough he leads us in that. He is an amazing soul, and I can’t express the joy I have to be his mother. I am hoping that I can be as positive as he is dealing with this cancer, but until then I will just marvel.
We love getting notes from website and we know that Andrew has touched many more lives through this experience. Thank you for your prayers and keeping up with his story. He will update soon.
