Monday, February 11, 2008

Latest Update From Karen

Sean started his 2nd chemotherapy cycle on Monday, Feb 4, and it went all week long. He was his same old self until Wednesday, and then things went kind of sour. The doctors told us in the beginning of his treatment that the chemo drugs would have a cumulative effect on the way that he feels so it was not surprise to see him get sick faster this week.

Kathy and I took Sean to the ER at St. Mark's Hospital on Wednesday night. He was extremely nauseous and none of his medication was working for him. He vomited several times over the span of 2 hours and was very dehydrated. The staff at the ER gave him 3 liters of IV fluid (mostly saline solution) and 3 dosages of anti-nausea medications. We were finally able to take him home around 4:30 am.

When Dr. Chandramouli heard about his night in the ER, he set Sean up on Homecare. They delivered a bunch of medical supplies and sent out a nurse to show me how to give him IV injections of anti-nausea through his PORT (the same drugs they give him in the hospital).

Thursday was a good day overall, but Friday was more like Wednesday. The dosage of IV Zofran that they had said that I could give him wasn't cutting it and Kathy and I had to take him into the ER for the second time Friday evening for extreme nausea and slight dehydration and stayed there with him until 1:30 am. After this trip to the ER we realized that Sean responds much better to the anti-nausea medication when he is hydrated and it is easiest for him to stay hydrated through IV fluids. SO on Saturday, the Homecare delivered IV fluids to us and sent out another nurse to show me how to set him up on an IV drip. They also said that I could increase the dosage of IV anti-nausea medication that I was giving him from 8 mg every 8 hours to 8 mg every 6 hours.

Since then he's been a little bit up and down but we feel like we have things mostly under control, for now at least. He sleeps a lot, takes his meds, eats and drinks as much as he can handle, and keeps in good spirits by playing xbox and watching the new Planet Earth (discovery channel) dvd set that he bought.

We're hopeful that the next two weeks will be much better for him and that he'll be feeling much better. We're looking forward to Jeff's visit next week too, and to be a couple more weeks closer to the end of this treatment.

-Karen

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Karen, YOU AND KATHY are Seans ANGELS and I KNOW Jeff is hurting and wishing so MUCH to know he's not there physically to help you both take care of his Seany Boy...THANK YOU so much for updating us. Sean is being well taken care of by you 2 and I KNOW he appreciates EVERYTHING YOU DO FOR HIM....Kathy AND Karen, this has to be SO HARD for you to go through...I can only imagine...WE LOVE YOU ALL....Aunt Laura, and the ENTIRE MARTELLA FAMILY..Please tell Sean we love him too and our thoughts and prayers are with him AND ALL FO YOU....THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP.....

Mel said...

Karen you really are an angel. Thank you for taking care of Sean and being such a great influence on him. You will be blessed!! Hope things start looking up for both of you and that this will all be over soon. Lots of Love, Melanie