It's 5:30 am in the morning and this is my first night in the hospital since Jonathan started his preparation for his stem cell transplant. I know I have trouble sleeping but I didn't think I was such a light sleeper until tonight. Let me explain - as part of Jonathan regimen - he gets hydrated a lot so that the chemotherapy drugs gets flushed out of his system - at the same time they are giving him chemotherapy drugs. Sounds confusing - huh? Well, the consequence of getting so much hydration is that he has to urinate quite regularly - in this case between 100 to 150 cc every 30 to 60 minutes. The only problem is that in the night - Jonathan does not get up to urinate so he wears diapers to try and prevent the bed from getting too wet.
Unlike the previous chemotherapy treatments when we could have changed his diaper every two hours - we have to check every hour and I've been getting up every hour to help the nurse. The good thing is that the nurse really needed help because twice when Jonathan's diaper came off he tried to 'bless' the nurse : ) keeping in mind he is still asleep or at least half asleep.
So I've gotten up so many times - I've decided I ain't bothering to try and go back to sleep. I tried doing some work but with a dial-up connection it's mightily difficult to get work done, i.e. it takes way to long. Boy do I miss my broadband / DSL connection at home : (. It's a pity the hospital doesn't offer some kind of network connectivity in the rooms - then I could really live here : ).
So today starts the third day of chemo or day -5 before day 0. Day 0 being the day he gets his stem cell. Luckily Jonathan has not begun feeling nauseous so we don't have to worry about his NG tube coming out. So less fighting for us for having him to take his oral medications because it can still go through the tube. Jonathan is also quite active but somewhat on the miserable side. Being a little stubborn and not listening - so it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next couple of days. This time we are being more firm with him - because if we don't he'll only get worse - and he's still a kid so I don't want him to think he can do whatever he wants and not listen when adults talk to him. All in all the start has been good - I'm hoping the rest goes well : ).
On a side note - a special request to those of you that are following Jonathan's progress. As he is in for a long haul / stay in a hospital environment it will be great if he can get mail. Nice cards or letters. For those of you that can, you can send mail to our home address:
Jonathan Seepersad
1035 Coleman Road, #7-117
San Jose, CA 95123
That's it for now - wish I had remembered to bring a movie so I could have watched it but I'll have to occupy myself with something else to do.
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