Hello,
It has been a long time since I have written on the blog, but I just really need to tell you all how awesome God has been. Last Thursday night, Kole was admitted to the hospital. One of the first things he has to do is get weighed. He weighed 16.5 kilograms. Then he has to do mouth care. This is a two part process that protects his mouth from bacteria and something called mucascitus. Well the nurse and I did it first to show him how it is done and that it is not bad. He cried but we got the first part done which was a swish that you end up spitting out. The next part was this yellow stuff that some mothers would recognize if your babies have ever gotten thrush. We ended up having to force him to take it. That may have been a mistake because he ended up throwing it up. That scared me. I thought "oh great! We have not even started chemo yet and he has already thrown up his mouth care." So that night I prayed that Kole would be able to do his mouth care. I also prayed that he would have fun in the next couple of days, not get nausous, have fevers or infection, and that the chemo would destroy any cancerous cells. The next day, God answered all of my prayers. It began with the chemo. Some kids throw up as many as 30 times with the amifostine. Not Kole. In fact he said he liked how it made him dizzy and that he wanted some more. Do you think I might have a drug addict on my hands? Oh well, God can handle that too. Then we got the news that they had an alternative to the mouth care but he would have to take a pill. Kole had no problems. He does the mouth care now although he still fights us. The miracles continued. He had to have another dose of the amifostine along with some other chemo drugs. This time they expected him to really throw up. Well he ended up not throwing up right away but later he did throw up his lunch of corn dogs and rootbeer. Do you think that may have been part of the problem? Anyway, He did fine later and ate a big supper. At night he has to be weighed again and he actually gained weight. Hallalujah! Saturday is a different kind of chemo drug. He has very high doses of this drug. He went through another day feeling great. He ate a lot, never felt sick, played, and urinated all day(sometimes 5 times in an hour, but this is important because this drug can do a lot of damage to the bladder). The roughest part of this day was the urinating all day and NIGHT and having to record it. Sunday was the last day of chemo and it was the same as Saturday's. We thought he would just sail right through. Well God had other plans. On Sunday at about 1:00 PM Kole started with a headache. We asked the nurse about it and she went to the doctor to see what she could give him. I thought it would be easy and she could just give him tylenol or something. Here to find out that during this time Kole can never have anything like that because it can mask a fever. When you have a compromised immune system a fever is key to detecting it early and taking care of it. So anyway they wanted to give him a pill of codein. By this time Kole was in a lot of pain and couldn't stay still. He was crying and I could not get him to take anything. So I asked if there was anything he could get through his IV. Yes, Let me talk to the doctor. It took quite some time but they ended up giving him morphine. Can you beleive that is drug of choice for pain tolerance. Anyway it worked and Kole is doing great. I guess I know that I need to start praying that Kole doesn't get any headaches.