Treatment

     Shad started chemo last night.  He is doing BEP chemo.  I will not go into the specifics of each drug here, but there are 4 different drugs he will be taking.  Each one comes with its own set of possible immediate and long term side effects.  He will lose his hair.  He will most likely feel nauseous.  It will, of course, affect his red and white blood cells as well as his platelets.  He will lose some of his hearing. How much exactly will not be known until he is done.  He may end up needing a hearing aid, or he may just lose sensitivity for high pitches.  He should not lose 100% of his hearing.  Those are the main ones.  There are of course others that could or could not happen, but we are choosing not to worry about those things unless they happen.  We feel like this is the best course of action, with the biggest possibility of remission.  He will have 4 courses of chemo.  Each course is 12 weeks long.  In those 12 weeks he will have 5 days of chemo, then 2 weeks off, then 5 days, then 2 weeks off and so on throughout the 12 weeks.
     He has had 2 days of the chemo at this point and is still doing really good.  He hasn't had any nausea so far, and is still eating normally which is really good.  Of course he will fell worse the longer it goes on.
     He had the xrays yesterday with his brace on to see if it will support his back enough for him to get up and move around.  We got the ok for him to get out of bed today, as long as he is wearing the brace.  We got to take him on a walk today with a wheelchair.  It was the first time that he had been outside since we came here last Thursday.  He was not to sure about it, but I think he eventually decided that it was ok.  I will post some pictures once I get them off the camera card.