April 22 update

It has been a week since Eirik’s third round of chemo.  Honestly, I expected this journey to be a lot more dramatic than it has been.  He has minimal side effects.  Maybe because we are quarantined, we just aren’t having any social drama, but I think we would be skipping it even without quarantine. 

The routine is to go to the local clinic for bloodwork every other Monday (a whole 45 minutes from leaving home to returning), two days later we go to CHaD (Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth) for his infusions (which takes half the day), then every weekend he takes an antibiotic.  That’s it. 

Each time he has gone in for bloodwork, they say that his results are “perfect!”  He has started to hate needles, though.

On May 6 he will go in for another battery of diagnostics so we can see what kind of progress there is.  He will have another pulmonary function test for his lungs, an echocardiogram for his heart (one of the medications can potentially cause heart damage), and the PET scan again.  He can still feel lumps in his neck, so I know it isn’t all gone yet, but things are looking good.

He gets nauseous for the day of chemo, and maybe a little bit the next day, but it is manageable for him even without medications.  I have told him there is no virtue in declining the anti-nausea pills, but he still doesn’t want them.  I’m fine with that.  He just takes a bowl to bed with him, but never actually uses it.

His hair is thinning out.  A stranger wouldn’t be able to tell yet since he has thick hair to begin with.  But when he pulls off the hood from his sweatshirt, there is hair all over it.  We suggested he may want to start wearing a hat to dinner (oh the scandal!) to keep his hair from falling in his food.

I have stopped obsessing about Covid.  It was really killing me emotionally, and since there is nothing more I can do to affect it, there is no point in my following it.  Checking now, I see there are 2.4 million cases worldwide, 1491 in my state, and 1-4 in my town.  I managed to go 3 weeks between my last two grocery shopping days, and am hoping to eke out 4 weeks before the next trip. I am very grateful for my pantry and freezer. 

Otherwise, life is just normal here.  Thank you for being interested in his progress.  We appreciate everyone’s love and concern.