Round 5 of Chemo is finally complete!

We’re creatures of habit. Even if we know that a certain activity does nothing for us, we continue doing it anyway. And we tend not to look for alternatives.

It’s a lot easier to do the same thing day after day, but do we ever ask ourselves why we do it? Why do we do the same things over and over? For example, how many of you have a morning “routine”…afraid you will forget something if you do it out of order? Been there, doing that!

If I have to do something that’s not part of the usual routine, I may forget something else (such as putting on deodorant or putting on jewelry). Messes my whole day up. I’ve noticed that my boys are the same way. If they have to “think” about doing something that is not a part of their normal routine, it will not get done. (or it will get done and something else will not!)

Similar thing happened at the end of last week. Harold started round 5 of his chemotherapy. We expected Day 1 & Day 2 to be normal nights. We expected Day 3 to be bad and Days 4 & 5 to be even worse. However, Day 3 for Harold started out worse than usual (and out of our normal chemo routine). He woke up and took the boys to school. Then immediately went back home to go to bed. He was nauseous. Extremely. And it lasted until Sunday! It was so bad that he stayed in the bed from Friday to Sunday. He would get up every 4 hours; long enough to get a drink and take another Zofran. He didn’t take his last dose of chemo on Saturday night. He said that he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

Sunday morning, I called the on-call Neuro-Oncologist at Duke. I couldn’t stand to see him that way. Turns out that the Zofran just quit working for him. He was taking it every 4 hours and it wasn’t even touching his nausea. The doctor suggested that he try phenergen and that it works in a different way than Zofran. Harold’s Dad brought him some and he took it around 2pm on Sunday. Within an hour, he was able to eat something and said he felt 110% better. When Harold’s doctor emailed me late Sunday night to check on him, she wanted Harold to try to take his last dose of chemo. But we didn’t get the email until Monday morning. So, Harold finished his last dose Monday night…two nights later than scheduled.

We were so used to the Zofran working for Harold, but not used to him staying in the bed for 2 or more days. It really messed up our routine. Don't get me wrong...we realize that it could have been worse. It definitely made us realize that we cannot expect each month’s dose to be exactly the same. We need to break the habit of expecting things to go just as planned. 5 rounds of chemo are complete with 7 more to go...

FYI - I’m working on a new blog website. I’m bored with the plain-jane Blogger templates and I’ve found a better host. I’m spending my spare time learning the new site, instead of updating this one. As soon as it’s ready, I will let you know. The new one will be more ‘private’, only available for those receive the ‘invite’. So, if you read the blog, be sure to email me with your email address so I can add you to the list. ksublett@nc.rr.com

Hope everyone has a safe, yet fun, holiday weekend. We have lots to do...as usual. Just hope it goes as “planned”.