Chemo #1 - checking in

Hi all - Amy here. Thank you guys so much for leaving comments for Scott - it made him feel so good. (Do you think he'd be mad at me if I told you he shed a tear??) It's always so amazing to see friends and family come together in tough times. Scott's a strong guy, but love and support will lift him up even more. Please keep up the love! :)

While Scott's first day of chemo is not totally finished, the actual chemo is done. It's amazing what he's going through in one day - it will be a 17 hour day by the time we're done. He had to do labs first thing in the morning, saw the doctor, got LOTS of questions answered and finally started the IV around noon. They used his new port and he's already happy he has that over an IV in his hand or arm. He had to do some preliminary hydration, some nausea meds, and then his actual chemo meds. He had three different chemo drugs administered "manually" - they didn't put them in bags and walk away - a nurse used large syringes and slowly administered them through the IV. They do that to make sure nothing goes wrong and they can monitor him. After two of them, they gave him a medicine to protect his bladder, and then gave him the third one. These medicines are really scary - they are so toxic. But it's all in the name of kicking cancer's butt.

Right now he is one hour into a 6 hour hydration bag. Once he's done with that, we'll go home. Tomorrow afternoon, we go to the Deerfield Campus (for those of you who don't know, we'll be in downtown Miami for the outpatient and inpatient treatments) for a shot to boost is blood counts and help his immune system. After that - he goes without chemo for the rest of this three week period and has an 5 day inpatient stay on March 21st.

Some really great news is that he is not feeling much pain. He hasn't even had to take pain meds today. Maybe it was all the distraction or maybe it's just things getting better - but we'll take it. He's in good spirits, but resting. Dad and I are here working and keeping him company. He will probably do his own post tomorrow, but I wanted to let y'all know how he did today.

Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers - we're very grateful. One more thing - please say a prayer for Scott's Grandma (Memmom) who is having surgery today. She fractured her neck and will be recovering for awhile.

With love,

Amy