Jesus, Have Mercy
Day two of the same brutal mixture.
It’s so horrible beyond words. Liam is still so nauseous from day one and then we have to give him the same round on top of it all. Jesus, have mercy! I thought I can usually find words, but there just aren’t any for this kind of thing.
Worse, we’ve opted to do a rescue med to protect his hearing. The sodium thiosulfate happens six hours after the cisplatin is finished and it will make you vomit. It doesn’t matter how many drugs you take for nausea, it will make you vomit. Because of the timing, it happens during the middle of the night.
At least this time I was prepared and asked the nurse to wake me before administering it so I could sit behind Liam and help him instead of waking up to projectile vomiting. Liam hates how the nausea meds make him feel and usually opts to do as little as possible. He’d rather throw up some than feel so stoned and lightheaded.
But after an hour of non-stop dryheaving he said, “I can’t do this anymore.” Mercifully, the ativan knocked him into a medicated sleep.
On Saturday, he wretched all day long. At first it was every five minutes. Around noon, it spaced out to every fifteen, and finally toward evening every thirty minutes.
When night fell, he slept. Thank you, Jesus.
On Sunday he begged and begged to go home. “What do I have to do to go home? I’ll even eat broccoli.”
It seemed too soon. We have fluids and zofran IV at home, but if we go home too soon, we risk needing to return to the ER. The ride home wipes him out completely. But I couldn’t bear his tears. Let’s go home. We’ll figure it out.
Kytrell, Benadryl, Ativan, Dexamethasone, Emend…. they’re all good drugs; but nothing compares to the feel and smell and taste of home.