FathersStory's Blog

            By this time, our son is more comfortable with telling people about his treatment.  So, from now on in these postings, our son will be referred to by his name, Stephen.  Most people call him Steve.  I’m really the only one who consistently calls him by his full name.  It’s just something I’ve always done.         

One thing about chemo:  it’s boring.  All you do is sit there for 4-5 hours while you get IV after IV.  But it wears on you, and the effect is cumulative.

 

The first couple of days, Stephen did fine, A little tired, but he still had enough energy to go Christmas shopping and stay up to 1:00 A.M. one night to talk to his brother Tom, who had just gotten home from college for spring break.

 

One more bit of good news.  He had another blood test, and his AFP level dropped significantly again, this time to 14.  He’s getting closer to the normal level of six or below.

 

We would take Stephen lunch this week.  Chemo affects your appetite.  Food tastes different these days for him.  What tasted good at the beginning of this first week of treatment was not appealing by the end of the week.  But he will get a taste for something else.  It’s almost like cravings during pregnancy.

 

An example:  in the effort to keep him hydrated, he’s been trying to drink a lot of water.  But even bottled water isn’t tasting good.  Tom brought home some Vitamin Water from school.  Stephen had a bottle or two and thought it tasted good.  But by the end of the week he couldn’t stand it. 

 

Stephen has been getting lots of visitors.  His high school is about a mile away from where he gets his chemo treatments, so a number of his friends came to visit him on their lunch time.  One day there were about six people visiting at once, so nurse Joan moved Stephen to a room where all could have seats.  In addition to the big room with the reclining chairs, there are several smaller rooms just off of it where a bit more privacy is afforded, plus the one bigger room mentioned above.

 

I went to Panera one of the days this week to pick up something for Stephen for lunch.  I saw one of the other teachers there, who also was his assistant soccer coach.  His wife also has cancer, leukemia, to be exact.  He’s found a donor for a bone marrow transplant for her, but her cancer needs to be in remission for the operation to be done.  Please pray for her.

 

One thing I noticed about him:  he had a crewcut.  We had started to hear things about kids at school shaving their heads in support of Stephen and his soccer coach.  But this was the first evidence I saw.  I saw more when a couple of friends visited Stephen, and they both had ski caps on.  I could tell they had their heads shaved, and they talked about it.  Apparently it caught on with a number of kids at school.

 

One day after chemo Stephen went to school to visit some of his teachers and wound up taking some pictures with kids who had shaved their heads.  They included the whole soccer team.  It was a wonderful show of support.  It also was the subject of an article in the school newspaper that Friday.  During one of the visits for Stephen that week, one of his friends mentioned the possibility of my shaving my head.  I just filed that away.

 

Next, chemo over the holidays, and an unexpected roadblock.