Feb 20, 2010

Derek just arrived home this afternoon from a week long session at PCMC (4 down, 10 to go). He is doing fairly well. The swelling in his hands has gone down, and he is able to eat. He lost 13 lbs., but gained 4 back, so Mom is loading his food with extra calories to keep up the momentum. (Cream for Derek, skim milk for the rest of us). A few days after being at the hospital, he was told that he was switching rooms. They had lots of patients coming in who were higher priority. Since they only had 30 rooms left for 35 new patients, Derek was moved to what the nurses called the "projects", one of the exam rooms in a doctor's office. He didn't care. He made friends with a girl next door who was battling leukemia, and whose treatments were much harder than his.
The hardest part of this 5 day treatment is that the chemo drugs cause hallucinations, so Derek just sleeps most of the time. Dad was worried about him, so one night he just slept in a chair in Derek's room. That was a hard night, so the next night he decided to trust that Derek would be taken care of.
People ask us when we will know when the cancer is gone, and when they will do more tests to know the condition of the tumor. We were told that they would do more tests on that within the month. When he goes in again, they will do an EKG to check his heart.  We will know more then.