Back in the Hospital

We went to his appointment on Monday, had his blood drawn and asked the doctor about a few “side effects” to see what we needed to do and if they were “normal”. The doctor put him on an antibiotic for the “red bumps” on his face and neck area, and gave him what they call “magic mouthwash” which he will take before he eats to help with the tenderness in his mouth. He did talk to the doctor about some hip pain, but all thought it was “normal”. His counts are low, which this is the time they are suppose to be, so he needs to be extremely careful with any exposure to germs, illnesses, etc.

As we were heading home, his back and hips were hurting a bit more. By Monday evening, the pain was to the point of him taking some of his “pain medicine”. I gave him second does later in the evening and it still did not ease the pain. By this point, the pain was the exact same pain he was experiencing before the surgery to remove the tumor. We both began to get scared thinking the tumor might already be coming back. He called the oncologist late that evening (I am sure we woke him up). He told me to take Michael to the ER and he would call in some tests and meet us there.

We checked into the ER, and they finally ran a CT scan about 3:00 in the morning. The ER doctor did say the CT scan was clean and that Michael’s oncologist was on his way in to admit Michael for further testing. His doctor showed up, talked to us for a bit and admitted him back into the Jackson building. He did get to see Michael in pain and how the pain affected him. The oncologist ordered a MRI on him and said he was going to contact Michael’s neurosurgeon and have him look into this as well.

Michael went down for the MRI early Tuesday morning. The MRI did show that his nerves where they removed the tumor was swollen and inflamed causing the pain. We spoke with his neurosurgeon and he suggested putting Michael on a “nerve” medicine to help keep the nerves calm. He did say that what might have caused this is from going from doing nothing (the first few days he came home from his Chemo treatments) to somewhat overdoing it (going and spending the evening at the kids’ competition). With the medicine and certain exercises he must do everyday, he should not experience this again.

Michael’s oncologist wanted us to speak with a radiation oncologist to discuss a possible change in the treatment plan. We met with him today, discussed what Michael was experiencing. He will still need to discuss everything with the oncologist first, but it sounded like he would like to get a few more chemo treatments in, redo the tests we did yesterday and see if we wanted to do the radiation before normally planned (which would be after the 6th chemo treatment).

Finally at 6:00 this evening, they discharged him from the hospital and we were able to finally come home. He actually feels pretty good as we are able to keep the nerve pain under control and not having him too medicated.

He is still scheduled to go back to the oncologist on his normal Monday appointments. That will be the day we will discuss his next treatment time and if they will decide to change any of the plan.