Jackson has finished the inpatient portion of Round Three of chemotherapy.  It started out with a blood transfusion, then on to hydration, then on into battle. He handled it all pretty darn well.  This was thanks to Jack’s awesome disposition, and thanks to an artificial slumber brought on by repetitive doses of Benadryl and three other lesser-known anti-nausea medications.  

It may have also been due in part to the unfortunate absence in this round of one of the more toxic chemotherapy agents – cisplatin.  In Rounds One and Two, he received  cisplatin, but this time our doctor cut it out of the line-up because, according to the hearing tests, its use has caused some permanent hearing loss in the speech frequencies.  As scary as it is to lose some hearing, and while we completely understand the rationale for benching the cisplatin, we were also very scared to NOT use it this round, if that makes sense, since it’s one of the more aggressive chemotherapy agents and we would have liked to have that weapon in our arsenal to attack our enemy.    

Either way, the next three rounds of chemotherapy will be even more intense, and will include stem cell re-transplants from the stem-cells harvested from Jackson last month.  For our supporters who work in the criminal justice field, it also means more ‘in custody time’ for Jack.  And he won’t be in the ‘general population’ so to speak.  Instead, he’ll be in the bone-marrow transplant unit which is very restrictive in terms of visitors, diet, sterilization, and everything else.  That means Keri and I will be with Jack in the hospital even more than we have in the past.

But first things first.  For now, just like with each of the preceding rounds, we have been sent home our drugs, our schedule, our gizmos, and syringes.  Our job again is to try to keep him properly medicated and free of infection to avoid any unplanned hospitalizations while his blood counts drop, and ultimately rise, prior to the next round.  In the meantime, he of course has a ton of appointments for various things like blood tests, physical therapy, speech therapy, and outpatient chemotherapy.  He’ll also have a few brief inpatient stays for blood testing, et al., to make sure his body is ready for the stem-cell transplants. 

Recently, Jessica and Zachary Hill (Keith and Marnie Hill’s wonderful children) gave Jackson a really neat present.  They sent him a box set of six Sesame Street books along with a CD of Jessie and Zack reading the stories to him.  I was able to sit in the hospital bed with Jack, pop the CD in, and let them do the work for me!!  Jack loved to hear them read the Elmo stories to him.  (We’re going to try it at home next, though, because our laptop computer speakers aren’t that loud.)  On behalf of Jackson, thank you Zack and Jessica, that was very thoughtful of you!