Sleep filled days and nights

Jerry has managed to go thru 2 treatments of the special Chemo cocktail and will resume Radiation on Monday.

The weekend has been pretty good for him. His color has improved ten-fold; his jaundice has all but disappeared. He has started to rest more comfortably since Friday evening as well - managing to sleep during the day and thru most of the nights. They did tell us that the Chemo cocktail they started him on will make him tired .. so we expected this.


His vitals have remained stable as well after a Saturday morning where his Oxygen levels were dangerously low. They have since put a tube in his nose to pump Oxygen into his system and help him breathe. Blood sugars are a bit low, but rising every hour. His liver count is continuing to decrease (woo hoo.. special dance) and his blood pressure looks strong.


The new chemo treatements have shown some of the side effects the doctor said may show such as blood in the urine and fluid in his belly - however, the fluid in the belly is not enough to worry about and the blood in the urine (which shows itself almost immediately after his treatment and then tapers off after a few hours. The doctors are not concerned about these but are monitoring them closely.


They did take him off of the nutrition IV as his system was not digesting it. They upped his fluids instead to replace the nutrition he is no longer receiving.

We talked to the docter on scene yesterday, who had also talked to his Oncologist (Dr. Williamson) - neither were thrilled with the lack of progress after 24 hours of the Chemo cocktail. They had hoped that the treatement would immediately start to break down the tumor in the liver "lyrosis" I believe is what they called it - where the tumor starts to break down and is digested back into the body.

He also told us that Jerry is basically breathing on one lung at the moment. This came as a shock as we didn't realize he had progressed that far. The cancer in his lung as well as the swollen lymph nodes and the tumor in his liver pushing his diaphram and everything up into his lung has significantly decreased his lung capacity making it harder to breath. This is why they connected him to a tube after his oxygen levels had dropped so low. They have mentioned that if his Oxygen levels stay decreased, they may switch to an Oxygen mask instead of only the tube.

His abdomen is still very rigid and tender. Due to the fact that they are pumping so many liquids into him as well as the Chemo drugs, they feel that he may be getting more fluid into his abdomen then they previously thought. If keeps up, they may take him down and "drain" the fluid from him to help him breath.

All in all, he's had some good moments and bad moments. We've had good news and not so great news.