Day After 2nd Red Devil: A-OK!

Our Man of Steel, BillyBob Drennan, is following, so far, the identical path he followed during the first 14 days after Red Devil/Gemzar chemo #1.

That means that today, day 1 after chemo #2, he is filled with energy, from steroids, and has a great appetite and refused to stay home and rest, despite my pleas. He made a to-do list for us with 11 things on it, and we did them all!

His only symptom is that his skin is bright red. According to our journal, tonight he will get a fever, but if he takes his nausea meds every 6 hours, including setting his alarm through the night, we hope he won't be upchucking in the red bucket tomorrow, like he was last time, on Day 3, from not taking his meds through the night.

Tomorrow, the journal says he will begin to feel quite ill, in several ways, and will start running a fever.

But by the 2nd week, he should start to recover.

Will this pattern hold, even though chemo has a cumulative effect? We don't know. We know he won't be BETTER than he was in round 1, but we hope he isn't any worse. (PS: He hasn't lost any hair at all, and should have lost it all by now. Ain't he sumpn?)

(By the way, those scary BUN/Creatinine scores were re-checked, and his body had pulled out of it. He came out of the danger zone and is in the normal range again on that. Whew!)

The Onco Bronco said that after the 4th round, he will go to Wake Forest and get another MRI identical to the one that found this new tumor by his heart, so they can see if this chemo is shrinking that inoperable tumor. If the tumor has responded well, he'll get another round of red devil, then 5 more rounds of totally different drugs as a followup (ten MORE weeks of chemo, after the 10 red devil weeks). If the tumor isn't responding to the red devil, he won't get any more red devil, and they'll probably switch chemo drugs, to find one that works.

I'll be posting! THANK YOU for caring and loving and praying and hoping on his behalf.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." -- Ps. 23