First Chemo, Day 2
Liam was still vomiting from the first day when we started the second day. It’s a brutal schedule. Doxorubicin, which many call the red devil. It’s literally the color of red koolade and looks like something that would kill you as it snakes through your IV tubing.
After that it’s two hours of steroids to protect your kidneys and then four hours of cisplatin. Cisplatin is a heavy metal and can cause hearing loss. It felt like satan was hitting Liam in the places he is most gifted … athletically with a monster tumor in his leg that would never let him run the same way again and with a chemo regimen that could take his hearing from him. He plays keyboard by ear and is so incredibly talented. Cisplatin has a wicked delayed nausea effect that can last for up to a week. One of our oncologists said the delayed results seem to be more profound in teenagers.
We were just trying to survive the day. Liam was getting ativan, benadryl, zofran (switched to kytrell), dexamethasone, and compazine IV push for nausea and it wasn’t cutting it.
That night he got a dose of sodium thiosulfate to protect his hearing. I thought I knew horrible. This took horrible to the most intense level you can imagine. He woke out of a medicated sleep projectile vomiting and it wouldn’t let up for an hour. Oh, Jesus, have mercy!
