Joey is feeling much better now that his sinus infection is gone. At his appointment with Dr Rosen this week, we got the details on the new treatment course that he starts in 2 weeks.  He will now get fewer spinals and he won't have to carry the bag around for 48 hours anymore.  He'll be getting the same type of chemo but in pill form.  Every other week he'll take 6-8 pills every 4 hours for 24 hours.  This means we'll have to wake him up for some of the doses.  He'll also get another medicine the day after - 2 doses, 12 hours apart.  

I assumed this would be easier for him, but the doctor said that the chemo in pill form is usually harder on the body than the fluid because it stays in the body longer and has more time to be toxic.  I'm hoping he gets through this as well as he did the last 5 months.  

We are spending this weekend at my parents lake house on Table Rock.  We got to spend some time with my cousins family.  They live in Minnesota and we don't get to see them much, so it was really good.  Joey and Cody got along and had fun playing together.

Here are some pictures of some fun things we've been doing:

Jon and I ready for a night out

 Bowling with the family for Mom/Grandma's birthday

 

Joey and Brea (Daughter of my cousin, Jeremy)

All the kids at the lake house

Cody, Katherine, Brea & Joey

We had a little photo-shoot down by the water 

 

 

Friday morning, I took Joey to the doctor.  They did a few tests, including a sinus x-ray that showed infection in 2 sinuses.  I was actually relieved.  A couple of days on antibiotics and he's fine.

We go in for labs tomorrow, but he has no major treatments this week!

We've had a little bit of a rough time lately.  Joey was sick last week with some sort of virus (one of the many going around).  His counts were low, but he managed to fight it off pretty well.  He used up 4 boxes of tissues in the first few days and his poor little nose was sore.  I was stressed through it all because I didn't know if it was going to get worse.  I didn't want to take him to a doctor and be exposed to more germs, so we bought an oxygen saturation monitor.  As long has his O2 was good, and he didn't get a high fever, I was comfortable with letting him ride through it without a doctor.

After Joey got sick, Katherine got an instant sore throat.  I knew immediately that it was strep again, so I took her right into Immediate Care for a test, which was positive.  So I worked from home and made Joey stay upstairs and Katherine stay downstairs so they wouldn't expose each other to more bugs.

This week, Joey had a spinal and brought home the chemo bag for 2 days again.  This time, they give him a small backpack on wheels, which he loved.  He always hates carrying them on his back that is sore from the spinal. This was his LAST time to have the 48-hr MTX and have to carry that bag around.  I asked him how he felt about it and he said "excited!"

This morning we dropped off the bag for the last time and went out to lunch before he went back to preschool.  He didn't eat anything and said he was cold.  I thought it was strange that he was cold but didn't think that much about it.  By late afternoon, he had a fever.  It got to 102.9 when Jon gave him some Tylenol and then it slowly went down after that.  He ran around the house all night and said he felt fine.  It's very strange.  I'll be taking him to a doctor in the morning.  My guess is that he has a sinus infection from the stuffy nose he had last week.  His counts were pretty good before the chemo, but I don't know what they are now.

I can't wait for summer!!