Friday, April 23, 2010

Last night was a tough night for Joe. About 3 hours after the radiation treatment(around 7 p.m.) he started vomiting. We had given him medication for nausea but he wasn't able to hold down the second dose. He vomited 3 or 4 times from about 7 - 10 p.m. and then I was able to give him more medicine which seemed to help. His sleep was very restless throughout the night. He complained for a few hours of his leg hurting and thrashed around in bed. I think I must have rubbed his calf muscle for almost two hours until he was able to fall asleep. Today the doctor and nurses thought the muscle complaints were possibly due to an imbalance in his electrolytes from the vomiting and/or cramping related to being strapped to the radiation table for an hour yesterday afternoon. This morning he awoke early and vomited again around 7 am and had some diarrhea. I was able to give him more medicine that seemed to help the vomiting. We are now shortening the period between anti-nausea doses and I think it is working out better. We had to carry Joe to the car this morning as he felt weak, tired and nauseous. We took him in a wheel chair from the car to the radiation appointment at 9:15 today and the process went much faster than yesterday. Since everything is pretty much set up and planned for his treatment, it only lasted about 15 minutes today. I am grateful because I really do not enjoy Joe being in the radiation room knowing dangerous rays are passing through his little body. I used this time to pray hard for the rays to go only where they are supposed to go to kill the bad cells and not to damage his healthy organs. One more week (5 more sessions) and the radiation will be over. He was a very good patient and very polite to all the nurses, technicians and doctors despite not feeling well. He did begin to perk up a little and drink some water as we left so the doctor wasn't worried of him becoming dehydrated. We will watch all of this very closely and give him lots of popsicles, gatorade and whatever else sounds good to him. He has no appetite today but he is drinking slowly so we will work on keeping fluids down first before we work on food. He has been resting more peacefully since this afternoon. We have the weekend off from treatments so I hope he will feel better for a couple of days before we start again next week. Thanks for your prayers for Joe!