Round 3 Day 1

These past 2 weeks  at home were a bit harder than the first round.  When we first got home, Steve couldn't eat or drink anything at all.  He got so dehydrated that he needed IV fluids but he really didn't want them.  He had just gotten home and he was just so tired of having everyone hovering over him and he didn't want to be hooked up to another line again.  One of our friends came over and hooked him up to start some fluids... It was only an hour or so before he stared to complain and wanted to be done.  Our friend who is a paramedic said we could give him the fluids faster so he could just get them in and he could be done.  Normally, that would have been just fine, but with Steve, his veins, and capillaries were so weak that flooding him with fluids to fast didn't quite work so well.  He went to lay down and and he started to complain of a pain in his chest.  He said it felt like a heavy weight was on his chest.  I called my friend who is a nurse and she came right over.  She listened to his lungs and said she could hear the fluid on his lungs.  She took the IV out and had him walk up to the corner of our street and back.  Kind of scary.  Steve is a terrible patient.  He hates all this attention and he hates to be confined and "hovered" over.  So this is so hard for him.  It's just something he has to get through.  The other complicating issue we had this last go round is our two youngest kids caught something right before we got home.  Sierra spiked a high fever the first night we got back.  The bad thing was, I didn't know that she was sick until after she had cuddled with her dad all day.  She loves her dad and misses him when he's gone, so it is not unlike her to go snuggle up to him and lay by him while he sleeps.  It made me very nervous since Steve was at such a high risk of catching anything and that could be very dangerous for him.  His body is unable to fight any little bug right now.  Then the next night, McKay spiked a high fever in the middle of the night.  Not to sure what they caught.  It seemed to pass quickly, just gave me a bit more to worry about and take care of when we got home.  I believe it was a tender mercy that Steve was protected from catching whatever they both had.  The nausea this time around was even worse.  I would give him his pills to control the nausea and he would keep them down for about one minute before he was running to the bathroom to throw them up.  In the end, we made it through to round 3.  Last Tuesday we had labs drawn and his levels were still really low.  The doctor wasn't sure that we would even make it to round three.  This morning when we came, the one level they were looking at had to be a very minimum of 1000 his was 1100.  Not great but they were okay to start.  Today has been a bit rough.  He got slammed with nausea and fevers right away.   Then his blood pressure dropped and all the meds they have given him in the past don't seem to be working as well this time.  It probably has to do with his weaken state to start with.  This is the time I pray!  I pray all the time, but right now it's a different kind of prayer.  Steve talks about the difference between prayer and pleading with the Lord.  This is one of those times I am pleading.  We will get through this.  When we talked to the doctor he said again that we were doing the best thing for Steve right now.  After this he said most likely we will be having social visits for about the next year and a half.  WHAT!  Is that all?  Hopefully longer than that, but I guess that is what happens in most cases.  He is hopeful that in that year and a half, there will be even more ways to treat this awful monster.  We hope for the best but plan for the worst.

Look at those cute heads

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