Home Again!





Nate's home!! Yay! We love when he is home!  We checked in to the hospital at 10:30am on Tuesday and once again, chemo didn't start until 11:30pm!  There just has to be a better way to do this.  Nate got 4 days of chemo this round and his last dose was on Friday night.  Then, he had to be in the hospital for 24 hours of post hydration.  That meant that Nate would not be cleared to be released until 1am on Sunday.  Normally, we would have just let him sleep through the night and come home first thing in the morning. We are now hospital experts, though, and have learned that a "morning" release actually means afternoon by the time the doctors finish rounds and get around to discharging him.  We figured that bringing Nate home at 1am is really no different than picking up sleeping kids from Grandma's after a date night.  We're night owls anyways, so we enlisted the help of Grandma and Linde to sit at the house while Wes and Ellie slept, and I headed down to the hospital to help Chris bring our little boy home at 1am.

Chris had the doctors and nurses get everything ready for Nate's departure, so when I got there they just had to unhook him from the IV, we put his jammies on and put him in the stroller.  He woke up right as we were leaving his room and he was hilarious.  He had gotten some Ativan, for nausea, right before discharge and it made him a little loopy.  He was happy, full of life, and ready to get home.  We drove home in almost complete silence and I thought he had fallen asleep, until we passed Peter Piper Pizza and he demanded to stop for some pizza and fun.  I guess he doesn't really understand what 1am means.

He was excited to see Grandma and Linde when we got home and was geared up and ready to play.  It took a little convincing for him to go to bed, but soon we were all snuggled in to our own beds.  He did wake up vomiting at 5am, right when his next dose of anti-nausea medication was due.  We got him cleaned up and got him some medicine, but he refused to go back to sleep unless Mommy slept with him...so I crawled in.  Good thing the boys have full size beds!

He has been ok this morning.  He has thrown up much more than we would like and it's been a balancing act getting medicine in him without making him throw up, but he is happy and energetic.  Wes and Nate have been playing so incredibly nice all day...maybe they are both ill...or maybe they are starting to miss and appreciate each other.  It was definitely worth bringing him home at 1am so that he could get a full day at home playing with his brother.

He ate a bit of lunch and a snack and has so far kept it all down.  I am very cautious.  I seriously have post traumatic stress disorder from round 3.  I'm second guessing everything about how much he is eating and drinking and how much he is keeping down, but Chris and I agree that, so far, he is handling these drugs 100 times better than he did the last time.  We have appointments at the clinic on Tuesday and Friday.  I want to make sure they stay on top of him and if he starts to have any dips in his electrolytes he can get fluids at the clinic or at home and not hit rock bottom like he did the last time.  If, for some reason, he were to start throwing up more tonight or tomorrow, I will take him in tomorrow.  I refuse to let what happened to him last time, happen again...we know better now.

Great news!! Nate never has to have cisplatin again!!  That is so awesome!  Cisplatin is just a nasty one.  It is THE WORST chemo drug when it comes to nausea and vomiting (which we know all too well), and can cause kidney and hearing damage.  So far, his kidneys seem to be doing fine.  I'm not sure when he will have another hearing exam to see if he lost any hearing.  Many kids that have cisplatin, have to wear hearing aides.  We will find out soon enough.  I'm just happy to not have to give him that nasty drug anymore!