Nausea

Another Thursday, another chemo.  Arrival at the clinic was met with toys.  Lots of toys.  Yet again, a family organized a toy drive for the chemo kids and each kid coming through the clinic was able to pick a new toy.  Logan of course chose the loud robot/alien voice changer.  Great!

Most of the session was standard.  Checked out with the doctors, blood counts were ok, killed some downtime doing tricycle laps around the clinic, slept through a good portion of the infusion.  Typically toward the end of the infusion, Logan starts looking a little nauseous.  A couple of times we have seen him heave a little, but he has never actually thrown up during his infusion.  That is until today.  Logan spent the last 30 minutes or so of his infusion throwing up.  In true Logan spirit, he was not really upset by it and managed to get through the rest of the infusion without much of a fuss just a lot of throwing up.

Before leaving, they wanted to get the vomiting under control, so a dose of an additional anti-nausea medicine was given and it really seemed to help.  This medication has some pretty strong effects and some pretty strong side effects.  Within minutes, Logan was slurring his speech, falling over and pretty much just completely inebriated. Well into the evening he is stumbling around bumping into walls. We took a couple hours off eating (I may have sneaked a cupcake when he wasn't looking.. shhh) and eased back in with some easy to stomach options and a light dinner.

My theory behind the change in nausea level:  Logan gets benadryl before his infusion every session to prevent a common allergic reaction to the drugs.  Typically Logan has been knocked out cold and sleeps for the entire infusion session.  The last few weeks Logan has not actually fallen asleep and so we have seen the full effects of the Benadryl.  Logan enters a deep daze and is completely unresponsive during this time.  His color changes and his lips turn white.  He has crying fits but is unresponsive and unable to be comforted.  Frankly, it is scary to watch.  After talking to the doctors about it, we decided to reduce the amount of Benadryl in his pre-med.  In addition to preventing allergic reactions, Benadryl acts as an anti nausea drug.  I think without this additional precaution, Logan just couldn't handle it.  Back to the drawing board.

The only other thing we have seen this week was a bloody nose Sunday night.  It's likely to be a "normal" nosebleed as there are a lot of factors against him right now, cold weather, the need to constantly have his finger in his nose,etc.  But seeing as how it is a common side effect of his chemo, I'll definitely be keeping it in the back of my mind.  Neither of our boys have ever had nose bleeds before so it is a little out of the ordinary for us.

Logan has 2 more session before his next MRI.  I can't believe how quickly this cycle has gone by.  Hoping for a better next session and continued great results.