The Beginning.

At about 8:45 today, as I sat with Ashton in a hospital bed, I watched the very first
dose of Chemo go into my little boy. He had no clue, he was too busy watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but somehow I knew this moment would be permanently etched in my brain forever.
He did really well with the Chemo. Besides being hungry that is. He started with a 15 minute drip of anit-nausea medicine, then the syringe of a chemo called Vincristine. After that he had a 15 minute drip of a chemo called Carboplatin. He will have the Vincristine once a week and the Carboplatin every morning before the Radiation. This will be for about 6 weeks. We have Christmas morning off and New Years day, but will be there Christmas Eve. That is sorta icky but we usually don't do any family stuff until the evening so it will most likely work out.

After the Chemo we had to check into pre-op, but just for today. After today we have a different
schedule which is a bit easier with less wait time. Anyway, we checked in, had to wait a while until finally they took us to the room where his Radiation was to be. This time, since his port was accessed from yesterday, they gave him his sleep medicine in his vein. It happened really fast, I was actually holding him. He had begun to cry and get worried and then I felt his head and neck droop and his body get heavy and I knew he was out. At this point the nurse was helping me lower him on the bed and we were sent out so they could begin. They did call me back to kiss him goodbye because I had forgotten. I thought that was nice. We waited in a small room just outside because we were to speak to the nurse we would be seeing everyday for some instructions. She was very helpful, but one thing she said scared me. She mentioned that Ashton was the first child she has had who received chemo every morning before Radiation.
She has worked there a while too. I asked why that was and she told me I should probably get that clarified with the dr. So, I did....My first thought was that his cancer was so far gone and there must be something that no one has told me yet. But, it turns out that because Ashton is participating in the "Study" this just so happens to be the protocol for him. He also just happens to be one of the first at Stanford to have it that way...the first there, but not in the state. Other kids may have chemo once a week, but higher doses where Ashton is having it every day in a smaller dose. After all that was cleared up we went and grabbed Ashton a hot cocoa and made our way to the waiting room and sat until they called us. It was an emotional day for me.
I think it was for Pat too....he got choked up a bit when he was receiving Chemo and later told me that as we were talking to the nurse in the Radiation dept., he kept seeing the light above the door Ashton was in, flash off and on....it read "beam on". He knew our baby was in that room and they were all in there to help him, but there was still something very sad about that.

Ashton had another hard wake up today...not as long as before, but man he knows how to yell and scream! It seems to only happen when he wakes up too fast, not gradually. He hollered and cried for a good 10 minutes but then like a light being switched, he stopped. No more crying, he was talking so sweet to the nurse he had just got through calling "stupid!" which has become his angry word around the house and hospital, and we are allowing him that. We don't allow him to call people that though, just FYI :) But after all that he did really well.

It wasn't until about 4pm when he started to say he was sleepy, his foot hurt and his tummy hurt. Pat called the dr. about his foot and as he was talking to her Ashton started to act really strange. He was sorta floppy and closing his eyes as he was sitting on the couch but I roused him and he was just really tired. I got on the phone with the dr. asking if it was normal for him to be so tired on the very first day of this and she said it was. She told me to remember he had gotten up really early, had had a lot done to him today and....and this is the good thing.....there are tumor cells dying inside him right now. I love how she put it.."There are tumor cells dying inside him, they are spilling their guts and his body has to get rid of all that." Wow. She said, "In a way it is good he is acting like that..it means things are working." Ok, I'll take that. I didn't know it would happen so fast, but I'll take it.