Blake came home on Tuesday afternoon. Did I actually say we were hoping for Sunday? Ah well. Things went fine. But it just took awhile for all the Yellow Slime to leave his body. On Tuesday, when the Yellow Slime was almost gone, they gave him a few units of blood because his hemoglobin levels would not come back up.
Wednesday morning he gets an ear check. Thursday he goes back in for Red Punch. Then a break for a couple of weeks. Hooray!
He has 9 treatments left. They come in sets of 3. One Red and two Yellow. We hope that we can stay on schedule and be done by Thanksgiving.
We are excited about this next round, because the Red Punch is about to get better. For those of you who want some details, keep reading. So far, every time he gets the Red Punch, he's been given two different drugs. 8 hours of doxorubicin and 4 hours of cisplatin (given twice! so 24 hours of chemo over 2 days). The cisplatin is particularly strong. It has hearing and cardiac potential side-effects. It also causes extra nausea. This coming treatment will be the END of cisplatin. As you read above, he'll still have two more doses of Red Slime. But they will be only Doxorubicin. That means no more ear checks, no more echo-cardiograms, no more cardiac leads and hopefully less nausea.
Hopefully this all makes sense. Thanks for all your prayers. We're looking forward to a big break in a week.