Today, was much better in terms of where our heads are, or at least where mine is. But again, that is the flux of emotions. Every day, you just kind of roll with it and embrace it and try to do so with some form of grace. It may not always be pretty, but I didn't start documenting this journey to portray it as anything other than what we are living every day. It is often messy, dramatic, and, clearly, there's some amount of emotion swing. Through it all, we have the constant of love. We are angry because we love Oliver. We are sad because we love Oliver. We are happy and invigorated because we love Oliver. We are a better family BECAUSE of this experience with Oliver. Above all, we are trying, and one day, one step at a time, we are making it.
Day 49. Holy cow. Almost 50 days. 5-0. That quite honestly blows my head up a little bit. It's really interesting because it seems like SO long ago we started this, but at the same time, it doesn't seem like it was quite 50 days. Kind of have to shake my head at that a little bit.
Oliver feels pretty terrible. And by pretty terrible I mean, he is god awful miserable. On the 1-10 scale, he's an 8.5-9 pretty much right now. Puke bag or bowl traveling everywhere with him. Luckily during the chemo days (day #4 of this 5 day block), he basically passes out all day. So, it's good that during these days, he can at least get some comfort and rest during the treatment.
Treatment started early again this morning. Justin and I both worked some in the morning, and then headed down around 11:30. And, then had a slight detour back as our neighbor had called to see if the boys could come play with her grandsons who are visiting....basically the boys favorite thing to do! So, turn the car around, we headed back to our hood to get the boys' swim gear, and drop them off at our neighbors. We were there from about 1-4, so the last part of the treatment.
Oliver was very entertaining, as you can tell (I kid).
Towards the end of these 5 day blocks, he is really too weak to walk. So we wheeled him out. We are hoping that on days 6-7 he is able to recover sufficiently. We are hoping so anyway, although we know from historical experience in the two prior rounds that days 6-7 can be pretty rough. I think the difference between now and round 1 is that we are sort of expecting it to be rough, and know that with the 3 of us, we can deal with anything (meaning Colleen, Justin and I taking care of him).
Meanwhile, the kids had a BLAST at Mimi's house (what they call our neighbor). She is so amazing to just offer to take our kids and run with them all over with her kids. 4 boys is a lot for anyone, although I know they do entertain each other.... but, so good for them to have some play time with friends and time away from the hospital. Especially friends who are like family, who just take our kids as their own and don't expect anything in return. We really don't have any family around who could or would do this for us... so we are so grateful for the Mimi's of this world who we have adopted as an extension of our family (and other friends around who are the same- you know who you are!)
We got home around 5pm after god awful Seattle traffic, and settled Oliver in/gave him some THC and meds, and started on dinner. Colleen also had a little fun with snapchat filters:
It was so funny, after the combo of meds kicked in, Oliver actually got a bit chatty! He was telling us all about a trip he took last fall and was talking about how on this trip that is when his ball started to hurt. I'm not sure if I ever talked about how he knew there was an issue. So let this be a message to anyone who is a man and/or has a young man (good to note: this is the most prevalent cancer in young men ages 15-25 or so). Basically what happened was in September, Oliver felt a lump on one of his testicles. Which hurt and was painful. My understanding is that these type of things are not always felt, so perhaps like women should do breast exams, men should do self ball exams. I think most men kind of check their goods regularly anyway, but probably a good idea to ring the alarm if something feels unusual. I have a feeling that if the lump didn't hurt, the story may have changed slightly- not sure on that, but possibly.
However, it DID hurt, so Oliver visited his primary care doctor shortly after. This guy did not even CONSIDER cancer as an issue: young male, healthy- how could it be cancer? As we have learned, and possibly more people should take note of: very common in young males. The primary care doctor put him on two rounds of antibiotics thinking it was an infection. Each round at about 10-14 days. There was no change, and in fact the lump was growing and so painful it was getting tough to walk. When the primary care doctor wanted to put him on 3rd dose of antibiotics, Oliver called it and searched out a new doctor. It was at that point that it was discovered it was in fact cancer, and needed to come out ASAP. So, he found it in September, very small growth, diagnosed in October after 2 rounds of (failed) antibiotics. Surgery was basically urgent and immediate in mid-October. By that time the lump had grown from pea size to grape sized, as it was explained to me, and was fully engulfing the testicle. When the surgeon went in, there were also growths found on the lymph nodes, which he also took out. SO: do self exams. If anything feels weird, get it checked. It sucks that Oliver was in pain with his, but honestly, if he wasn't, it could have gotten out of control very quickly, so we are grateful for that.
Oliver was able to eat last night, although everything is tasting a bit weird. But at least he was able to get a little bit down. After that, back to sleep.
Our #oliverstrong shots of the day. The second one being Mimi and her grandsons. Love it!
And with that, we sail in to round 3 day #5. Last long day of this round. We are relieved to be through this block, although some hard days might follows. But, ever onward we go. #oliverstrong.
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