Garbage

JP has felt like garbage ever since his chemo last Friday. Not that I'm counting, but that was 6 days ago and I figured it might be rough for a couple days after but not this long! We've been fortunate enough that JP has handled everything up until this point pretty well - playing-baseball-and-shooting-hoops-after-chemo well. He complains all day that his tummy hurts, not surprising because (we've heard) the new chemo he's getting can cause crazy bad nausea. He's never thrown up since he was diagnosed, which I think is a miracle in itself given all the awful things we've pumped into his little body. When I ask him to point where it hurts, he grabs his ribs, dead center in his chest. That makes me think it's heartburn, which makes sense because the steroids came with Zantac to combat heartburn. The only thing that worries me is that Oxycodone doesn't even take the edge off of his pain. That's some strong heartburn to be able to still hurt after Oxy! I take that back, sometimes after he's had Oxy he's silly for about 15-20 minutes and then goes right back to complaining, but more often than not we aren't seeing any pain relief for him. One of our neighbors came by the other day right after he had gotten some Oxy and he was acting like himself, he was talking away to her and when she left he said, "Mom! She had pretty lips! And eyes like us!" Cracked us up and just 20 minutes later he was back to crying/whining on the couch about his tummy. They switched him from Zantac to Prevacid (our first really expensive prescription oddly enough) and I don't know how long it takes for that to start working but he's had it for 2 days now and still no marked improvement. Maybe today. I really wish I could take it all away. That, or I wish cancer was a person or a thing that I could punch in the face and kick in the shins for what it's doing to my sweet boy. Stupid cancer. 


In other news, his appetite is quite funny. We've gone through at least 12 ounces of Cafe Rio's tomatillo dressing, about a dozen burrito sized tortillas, countless corn tortillas (made into "little chips" like they top your salad with), and almost 3 bags of Lay's BBQ chips. Highly spicy and/or salty seem to be his preference. He doesn't like anything but water to drink - yesterday I did get him to drink some Pediasure juice but he gagged after a few sips. I wish (if I can't fight this for him) that for just a moment I could taste what he is tasting or feel the way he is so I can understand it better and know what to offer that might help him feel better. I had a CBC (complete blood count) done yesterday to see where he is and to see if it's normal but the hospital won't call us back. I called at 3:30 yesterday knowing they close at 5:00 and they said that a nurse would have to call us back. At 4:30 Josh called and they told him the same thing - he asked if they close at 5:00 and they promised someone would call back... we still haven't heard. I just hope they call this morning so we know what plan of action to take - I guess no news is good news but I don't like that we got the bloodwork done and to the lab in plenty of time for us to have known yesterday but we still don't know anything! Oh, the impatience of a mama bear trying to fix her cub...