Friday, June 20, 2014

Busy week

The past week or so has been crazy in our house.  I have been working like crazy to finish up the school year at the 2 school where I do therapy.  This requires a lot of paperwork, documentation, last minute evaluations, meetings and last chance for make-up therapy.   Logan, of course, did his part in making this as difficult as possible.

The first offense was last Friday, when Logan threw up upon arriving at school.  He has been doing this every "off chemo" week for the last 4 treatments. Because these episodes are happening so far removed from infusion (a week or more) it can be assumed that it is not related to the chemo.  So why is he throwing up every other week?  The doctors don't know.  I don't do well with not knowing, so I visit my good friend Google.  Google is the kind of friend that thinks he knows everything and gives you advice that you really don't want to listen to.  He has a tendency to jump to conclusions and get into your head. This is probably even worse than not knowing.  I really try not to take the stuff I read on Google too seriously, but you can't help but read into some of it.  The 2 theories discussed with the doctors are 1. the tumors (or new tumors) are growing causing increase pressure in the brain leading to unexplained vomiting (not totally illogical since we know he has tumors and is very likely to grow more tumors) and 2. hypoglycemia causing early morning vomiting (again, not totally illogical since it only happens in the morning after a long night of not eating). Since Logan is scheduled for an MRI next week, we will be able to confirm/rule out tumor involvement.  Now we wait.

The 2nd offense was Tuesday when Logan had to be picked up from school due to some very aggressive diarrhea.  Diarrhea is a very common side effect of his chemo, so a quick dose of medicine and little diet adjusting and we were good to go.

Wednesday started a string of doctor appointments.  Wednesday he was seen by the cardiologist.  This was to clear him for a change in medication for ADHD.  They completed a thorough assessment including an EKG and ECHO.  Logan did an INCREDIBLE job sitting still for the long ECHO and was cleared as everything looked "fine".  Our adventure at the cardiologist was not over quite yet.  Due to a history of some pretty serious life threatening heart issues in my family, the doctors wanted to be EXTRA sure Logan was clear, so they put him on a 24 hour Holter. My family is no stranger to the holter, but for those of you that don't know, a holter is basically a heart monitor that you wear for usually 24-48 hours.  With it, they are able to assess your hearts electrical functioning within your normal daily routine.  Logan did fine wearing it, although occasionally got tangled up in the wires. 

Thursday was his normal chemo day, but we started out with a trip to see his neuro optomologist first.  A few vision assessments and scans later, Logan was given the 'OK' again and were were off to chemo.  Another "normal" chemo.  They increased some of his pre-meds to try to combat the still increasing nausea.  As I mentioned, much of the discussion with the doctors this round was trying to figure out the unexplained vomiting.  We are also still holding out for talking about the behaviors/medication, but they are trying to get us in with one of the other neurologists that specializes in NF related ADHD behavior problems. Hopefully that will be able to happen soon.

Logan did a great job (duh) and actually slept through his entire infusion (in part I'm sure to the increase in premeds).  He did well most of the evening and again was able to eat very healthy portions of snacks/dinner.  The trouble with that was that when his anti-nausea meds wore off around 2AM, mommy had to clean up those very healthy portions of snacks/dinner.  I can not wait for the day when Logan can manage to get to a receptacle before he starts. 

Tuesday Logan will get another MRI.  As always, I'm on edge and anxiously await these result, even more so this time as we have this random vomiting hanging over our heads. 

To sum it all up, in one week we have seen vomiting and diarrhea, been to/scheduled for 4 different doctor visits and in the end will have been seen by no less than 15 nurses and 7 doctors.  Oh, and I managed to get all my work done. 

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