Jackson was admitted to the hospital last Friday to start the 5th round of chemotherapy, which is identical to the last round.  It consisted of two days of high-dose chemotherapy, to be followed by stem cell transplant tomorrow, Tuesday.  

Like last time, Jackson must remain in the isolation room and we must follow all of the sterile procedures Keri mentioned last month.  The only difference now is that we're more used to it and are becoming fairly adept at all of the procedures.  One of them requires changing his diapers using only sterilized water and surgical gauze and bathing him three times a day with sterilized water.  We have to do this because one of the drugs he is getting excretes through his skin and can burn him if we don't wash him on schedule.  He hates all the baths, of course, and fights like crazy, but so far he's had virtually no skin burns.  He is having a little difficulty with vomiting today, but yesterday and the day before he had none at all.

The nurses and doctors measure everything that goes into and out of Jackson’s body.  During the chemo, they expect to receive diapers with a certain quantity of output every two hours or else they become concerned that his body is not clearing the chemo out of his kidneys and bladder quick enough.  If he doesn’t do it quick enough, it can harm him.  It usually works out fairly easily in the daytime, if he’s awake.  However, at night he rarely complies with their timetable.  This causes everyone to stress because it's important that he gets that stuff out.  Normally what happens is right after we go to sleep, they come in for a diaper, but he hasn’t gone.  They’ll monkey with his IV pole for a while, giving him more fluids, and debate whether to give him drugs to make him urinate.  Then they leave and come back every 20 minutes or so for about three hours to check his diaper and make the IV pole beep like crazy.  Then, when he finally pees an hour and half later, everyone is happy and they can take it off to the lab.  Then we get to go back to sleep for a few minutes until the IV pole starts beeping again for one reason or another.  And then pretty soon it's time for them to take his next diaper, but guess what, he hasn't gone yet...

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11:00 a.m. they will transplant the stem cells.  Wish him luck!!!  Thank you for checking in on him.