So far the side effects from his chemotherapy are still bearable.
Most uncomfortable side effect is vomiting. He gets his chemotherapy every Thursday and he receives a dose of iv Zofran before he gets his chemotherapy at the clinic. He is usually ok on that day.. but starting Friday evening, things will turn really bad!! He will start vomiting severely around Friday evening and it will continue until Sunday... by Monday he is much better. Only thing that seems to help him is to give him Zofran aroud the clock (every 6 hours) at home from Friday to Sunday... and yet I still have to do at least 1 load of laundry everyday to wash his clothings and bed linens that are soiled with his vomit.. yuck!
Another side effect from the chemotherapy is the drooping of eye lids.
Look at his left eye lid..it is definitely drooping.. and maybe his iris is a little bit deviated upward.... I took some pictures of his eyes so that I can show to his neuro-oncologist. He said it was due to one of the chemo drug, vincristine. This side effect is related to drug's effect on the cranial nerve... we have to watch out for worsening of this condition because if this gets worse then there might be other cranial nerve involvement also and we might have to stop vincristine... Dr. Packer (Jason's neuro-oncologist, who is a world renowned neuro-oncologist who started the standard chemotherapy regimen for brain tumor-vincristine + carboplatin) said this side effect won't be permanent (thank God!) but may take a while to return to normal.... hew..
Hair loss is another side effect...
before hair loss...
and then after the hair loss
see the difference in his mid-line??? At around 4-5 weeks into his chemotherapy, his hair loss was so bad that chunks of fallen hair was everywhere and I needed to constantly pick them up using a lint-roller to avoid hairs getting into his mouth ..I almost thought he would soon become bald.. but thankfully, his hair loss slowed down...
Lastly, his blood count... specially his hemoglobin level is so low.. basically he is very, very anemic. Well it was low when he was discharged from the hospital because of surgery and so much blood draw during hospitalization.. and with chemotherapy which cause myelosuppression, his hemoglobin count is not recovering well...
His last hemoglobin count was around 8.7 or so... normal level being between 13-17 something like that... usually doctors consider a transfusion if hemoglobin level goes down below 8. So I am just hoping that his hemoglobin level will not go down any further....
And of course, his white blood cell count...it was relatively ok until last chemotherapy session where his ANC (absolute neutrophil count) went down below 500 meaning that his white blood cells were wiped out by his chemotherapy... they did manual differential for ANC again which showed little bit better count so he received his chemotherapy... so we have to be EXTRA careful with him not to catch any nasty bugs... with low white blood cell count, your immune system is very weak and you can easily catch infections...
so wash your hands well and cover your coughs around Jason!! =)
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