Friday morning we dropped the boys off at Tony's brother's house and headed into Huntsman. He had a blood draw and a covid test scheduled for 11. After they completed his tests, they told us they would let us know when a hospital room opened up. Since we have past experience with things like this, and knew they likely wouldn't call for a few hours, we left the hospital and drove about 10 minutes to the City Creek mall for lunch. We had a delicious lunch at the Blue Lemon, and then perused the mall. They didn't call us until almost 5 o'clock. Once Tony was officially checked in, it took them a bit to figure out he didn't have a port. Then, of course, the nurses staff switches out at 7. So he didn't get a picc line put in until around 8. They do the procedure beside and the nurses were very nice. He said the only thing that bothered him was when they put the lidocaine in before the procedure.
Shortly after that they were able to procure a menu for him. This hospital has some really great food options for him that he's pretty excited about. The phones stay open until 9 for food, so he ordered some beef teriyaki. There was a bit of a miscommunication when the teriyaki came without rice, but he called down and they quickly sent some up for him.
He's really enjoyed having the blanket his sister Nicole made for him to keep his shoulders warm in these hospital robes.
They started his chemo around 10 p.m. Friday night. It's high dose Cytarabine. It takes about 3 hours to go into him and he receives it every 12 hours, for 6 times total. So his last dose should be Monday morning.
Monday afternoon he should be able to come back home. Then we'll be down at the hospital every other day to do blood draws and transfusions. He should start feeling the worst of the effects of this round of chemo next weekend. So it's likely not going to be his favorite Easter. But we went shopping together for the boys a few days ago while he was still feeling well.
Before we found out that his chemo was going to start Friday, we had actually bought tickets with my brother to go to Lagoon Saturday. So yesterday, his Mom came down and spent the day with him at the hospital while the boys and I were at Lagoon. Cody just hit 48 inches recently (with his tall basketball shoes on). So he was ecstatic to ride the big rides and has a new love for any ride that goes upside down. We also were there with my friends Shay and Lindsay. I didn't get a picture of Lindsay but she had Kevin for a lot of the day with some of her friends on the Kiddie rides. Kevin only lasted half the day and then Erin picked him up so he could rest. Chelsea's cousin works at the face painting booth so she turned Jack in Yoshi, and gave Cody a crown. We didn't make it onto the Ferris wheel at National Harbor so we had promised the boys the Ferris Wheel at Lagoon. The only problem was it was insanely cold at the top of that Ferris Wheel yesterday. Both Jack and Cody (and me) decided that Cannibal is the best ride at Lagoon and we were able to ride it twice, once in the front row and once in the back.
Tony's been feeling mostly ok besides some nausea with this chemo. He's mostly eating light foods to combat the nausea. He definitely has less of an appetite today than he did on Friday. He slept better last night than he did the night before, and he's happy to be able to come home tomorrow and sleep on his nice mattress. The nurse said his counts are likely to drop 7 days after day one of chemo, and then come back up between day 16 and 20. We have a Florida trip scheduled 30 days after day 1 of chemo, and we'll get back 2 days before his next round starts. So we're hoping all goes well so he can swim with dolphins at Discovery Cove and go on our Disney cruise before his transplant.
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