Hello All-

EK here.  Sareana is spending her second night in the hospital, and doing well.  Yesterday she got up at the crack of dawn to report to the hospital at 530 for the port installation surgery.  Surgery started at 7 a.m. and went fine- the surgeon called me around 745 to report that everything had gone well and Sareana was in recovery.  I got the boys off to school with the help of Kristen from across the street, and was at the hospital by 830 or so.

They got Sareana to a room around 915; she was tired and sore, but nothing compared to post-brain surgery.  Her neck, shoulder, and area around her clavicle where the port is are sore, but this means no more IVs (which have always been tough for her- small veins) throughout the chemo process.  They can put chemo, anti-nausea meds, pain meds, hydration, draw blood, whatever, all through the port, and they can do multiple things simultaneously.

Before starting chemo, the oncologist wanted her to have a bone scan.  Around 1030 they injected a contrast of some sort, then waited 3 hours for it to go where it needed to prior to the scan.  Scan was from 130 to 230 or so, then another couple hours before they started the chemo.

The first chemo medication takes 6 hours to infuse (i.e. 6 hours of dripping via IV).  There was a minor problem with the interface between the port and the IV tube at first, so they stopped right away, tested out the port with another scan to find the problem, and ended up re-"tapping" the port to make sure everything was flowing correctly.  This took several hours, so she didn't actually start chemo until about 730 pm, and it ran til about 130 am.  She was able to sleep intermittently throughout the process.  It's good that she's at the hospital and they're keeping a close eye on her, but that also means constant interruptions, checking vitals every few hours, lots of people stopping by at all hours, etc., so it's tough to sleep.

She spent today recovering, resting, and overall feeling tired, but pretty decent.  They have to wait 24 hours from the start of a chemo session to begin the following session, so she started tonight's session around 8 pm.  It's a different agent than yesterday; it only takes 1 hour to infuse, but it requires some follow-up drugs at 4 hours and 8 hours to help protect her from some of the side effects.  Hopefully she tolerates it well, we'll see tomorrow how she's doing.

The timing means that they won't start tomorrow's session until around 8 pm or so, plus the follow up drugs, so she'll spend Wednesday night at the hospital as well, and hopefully come home at a reasonable hour on Thursday.  Then one more outpatient shot at the doc's office on Friday, and hopefully that's it for this cycle.

The boys and I stopped by bright and early to visit before school, and hope to do the same tomorrow.  I was able to spend most of the afternoon with Sareana, and hopefully can do something similar tomorrow.

Thanks for all the good thoughts and well wishes, hopefully we can send out a post-chemo report in the next week or so.  Boys are doing well, Sareana is in good spirits, we're all hanging in there.

EK