Travis had a great second week of school and it is amazing to see him working so diligently on his school work so that he does not have to worry about falling behind while he is out.  Mrs. Mills is great about preparing weekly assignments for the kids so Travis knows what he has to work on.  We even made it to the ECC Back to School night on Wednesday.  There are so many good kids in the class and we know most of their families already.

Tyler finished his first week back at school as a big 8^th grader.  He is becoming so mature but it is still hard to believe that he is one year away from High School.  Wow!  He is taking some advanced classes again this year with High School Geometry and Honors English.  He is also taking Leadership again which combines ASB (Associated Student Body) and Broadcasting so it allows him to do some pretty cool stuff while he is involved in most of the school events.

We had a little bit of a scare when checking in on Thursday for Round 3 of Chemotherapy to start on Friday.  Before we meet with the Doctor, they run routine lab work (CBC and Electrolytes) so they know where we are starting from.  But apparently Travis’ blood counts had dropped quite a bit since he was released from quarantine the last time and they were very close to not being able to start the third round of chemo.  His ANC or Absolute Neutrophil Count (first responders of the infection fighters) was at 1008 and they will only do chemo if it 1000 or higher so we dodged a potential delay.  We know Travis would not have minded the delay but we keep telling him that every day and every treatment gets us one step closer to being done.

So on Friday, Lynne and Travis checked in to the hospital around 9am and were admitted to our room for the next several days.  You may think that being in the hospital over the weekend, let alone a holiday weekend, is a bummer but it actually works out well for us.  Things tend to slow down around there with the number of patients, traffic, etc. and it allows us to come and go without having to worry about missing work or school so that we can support Travis the best we can.  Besides, there was a heat wave in San Diego County over the Labor Day weekend so we appreciated the comforts of air conditioning at the hospital.

Things got off to a little bit of a slower start and we did not begin the chemo infusion until around 4pm.  They have to make sure Travis is fully hydrated before they start as it is very important to continuously flush the body’s system throughout the process.  After our experience last round, they decided to change up the anti-nausea efforts and prescribed a steroid along with a new medication called Palonosetron.  It seems that with those two combined with the Marinol and the Cisplatin reduction down to 75% of the original dose for this round, Travis did amazingly well.  He had no real nausea symptoms, was eating something at each meal and was walking around and outside multiple times through the weekend.  Amazing!

The original plan was that they were going to keep him in the hospital until Tuesday to make sure he was fully hydrated before he went home.  Then they scheduled 2 days of home health care so that they could run fluids overnight on Tuesday and Wednesday.  But when the doctor came in on Monday to check on him and with all of his Blood Counts and Eltrolytes looking good, they let us go home on Monday afternoon.  They even de-accessed his port which meant we did not need the home health care to come.  Once they saw how good Travis was doing, it was Time to Flee After Round 3.

It was a great feeling for Travis to get home and see Cisco and sleep in his own bed.  Same for the rest of us too!

Thanks,

Tony and Lynne

With Travis’ counts still low as of last Thursday, he was pretty disappointed that he was not be able to go to our soccer team’s beach get-together on Friday evening nor was he able to go to the games of our tournament over the weekend.  The boys missed having him there too and Christian’s mom, Juli, arranged for all of the boys to wear grey wrist bands to show their support for Travis’ battle with brain cancer.  By the way, grey is the color for brain cancer since it represents the grey matter.  Get it?  It was totally awesome and Travis wore his the whole weekend!  Tyler even shot video of the games for Travis to see.

This was also the weekend where Tony’s company does their family picnic each year.  For the second year in a row, they were holding the picnic at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, and reserved the top of the Western Metal Supply Building which overlooks the third base line from up high.  They serve hamburgers, hotdogs, nachos, peanuts and all kinds of food and drinks.  We had a blast last year and we are really sorry we had to miss such a fun event and exciting game against the Mets (Go Padres!).  But we just didn’t want to take the risk with Travis not feeling the best this past week.  They even had a message play on the giant scoreboard in support of Travis.  Wow!  The person who organizes the event each year, Trish, told the Padres about Travis and they invited us to come to a game when Travis is feeling up to it.  That is so generous to offer our family a chance to go to a game!  We are very excited to try and go on Saturday before the third round of chemo starts to see the Padres play the Cubs.  Thanks so much Trish for your support and thinking of Travis!  Go Padres!

The major goal over the weekend was to have Travis ready to start school on Monday with all of the kids.  So, Travis and Lynne went down to Rady’s at 7am Monday morning to get the blood work done and the good news is that the counts are back up so he is out of “quarantine.”  But, as luck would have it, Travis was not up to spending the day at school since he has been feeling pretty weak over this last weekend.  So, they ended up going over to school at the end of the day so that Travis could say hi to his friends and teacher which was a big first step. Mrs. Mills is such a great teacher, as we know from when Tyler had her 3 years ago, and she had a packet for Travis to start working on.  No slack!

Travis was feeling pretty good off and on throughout the afternoon and evening on Monday so we are planning for him to go to school on Tuesday.  Lynne dropped Travis off and got him set up in the classroom so we are proud of him powering through to begin his new year as a big 5^th grader.  Lynne will stop by to have lunch with Travis and see how he is doing.  We are keeping our fingers crossed!

Thanks so much to the Sando family for the great Movie and Ice Cream care package!  We know everything will get put to good use.

Thanks to everyone for all of your continued prayers and words of encouragement!  Round two is through.

Tony and Lynne

We had Travis’ blood work checked today and his ANC (white blood cells) and Platelets (blood clotting) were still low which means another weekend in quarantine.  He was pretty bummed since he wanted to go to soccer practice to see the boys and was really looking forward to going to our soccer tournament this weekend.  The other bad part is that he is supposed to start school on Monday and it does not look like he will be able to.  We are going to have his blood work done again on Monday morning at 7:30am so if all looks like it is improving, he could go in a little late.  Otherwise, we will go when we can.  With his white blood cells (infection fighters) down, we do not want to put him at risk of getting sick.  The good news was that the blood transfusion last weekend helped and his Hemoglobin is back up.

Lynne has a meeting with his teacher on Friday so that we can go over our current situation.  She is very excited to have Travis in her class and is very willing to work with us when he can’t be in the classroom.

Last week, we forgot to thank Violet, Shoshanna and Elliott for taking Tyler to Boomers and dinner.  He had such a great time and we really appreciate you thinking of him!

Thanks,

Tony and Lynne

Sorry!  It has been an interesting and educational couple of weeks since our last update and we are just getting around to catching up.  We started Round 2 of chemotherapy on Friday, 8/2, and went straight to our room since all of the paperwork and labs had been completed on Thursday.  Travis was feeling pretty good and watched some movies to help pass the time.  Tyler was supposed to go to the beach with Zachary and Bessie but he was not feeling well so he stayed at home to rest and hang out with Cisco.  After work Tony came down to have dinner and stay for a few hours.  At bed time, Tony left to go home around 10pm.  Overall, it was a good first day!

Saturday started out ok but later in the afternoon, some nausea set in.  We were able to control the nausea but the down side is that medicines combined (Ativan and Phenergan) make him feel very sedated so he sleeps a lot.  Tyler was supposed to go down with Tony but we felt it was best if he stayed home since he was not feeling 100% the day before so he and Cisco hung out all day.

On Sunday, Lynne and Tyler went to church and came down around lunch time.  The nausea was there most of the day and it really keeps Travis from wanting to eat or drink anything.  So, we let the IV fluids do their thing and we were hoping he would be feeling well enough to go home on Monday.

Monday – Nausea was calming down some but Travis just did not feel like eating or drinking much so they decided to keep him on IV fluids and medicines.  It was a little disappointing to find out we were not going home but everyone said that it did not make sense to rush going home only to have to turn back around and be readmitted.  So, we accepted the facts and set our new goal of going home on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we were given the green light even though Travis was not eating much and drinking a little water.  Lynne asked the doctor about prescribing and appetite stimulant and they gave us Marinol (aka medical marijuana) to help with eating and nausea.  Several people asked: “does he have to smoke it?”  Funny!  But the answer is NO since it is in the pill form.  So, we went home a little after lunch time.  Travis was excited to be home and he seemed to be doing ok.  But then on Wednesday, he was not feeling too well and by the evening, everything was aching and his jaw was hurting so we gave him some Hycet so he could get some sleep.

On Thursday, one of the nurses called to check and see how things were going and they recommended that we bring him in to have his lab work checked.  As it turned out, his electrolytes were all out of whack with his Potassium, Magnesium, Sodium and Phosphorus all very low.  So they went ahead and admitted us so that we could run IV fluids.  That was not exactly what we wanted to hear but at least that would help explain things and we were in the best place to get his levels straightened out.

After running the fluids with additives (Potassium) and taking supplements (Potassium/Sodium, Magnesium) over night, on Friday we could tell Travis was starting to bounce back and feel better.  Even though his electrolytes were still low, they were slowly starting to climb up.  The thing is, when your Potassium is low, apparently it can affect your heart rhythm so they kept him on the monitors.  The good thing was that with all these things he had to take, Travis learned how to swallow pills with the help of the nurses and started taking pills Friday night.  Big step! This made medicine time much easier, especially since some of those liquids taste horrible!  This was also Day 8 of the chemotherapy cycle but since they did not want to complicate things more, they decided to hold off on the Vincristine boost until the next day.

By Saturday, even though some of his levels were still low, Travis was really starting to feel good and made it out to the play area about 5 times with one of the times being out there more than an hour.  It was great to get outside and feel the warmth of the sunshine.  By this time, his Potassium had crept back up but we needed it to be stable over a period of time before they would let us think about going home.  So, we were in for another night!  In the evening, we did get the Vincristine boost and the Blood counts (ANC, Hemoglobin, etc) were starting to drop as expected since this was in our 7-10 day window where the counts get the lowest.  The nurse mentioned that if the Hemoglobin continued to drop below 7.5, we would need to do a blood transfusion which was something new.  After dinner, we watched a “Duck Dynasty” marathon on A&E.  Those people are Funny!

On Sunday, the potassium level stayed level consistently and we were able to take off the heart and respiration monitor which was half way to freedom.   Travis was really feeling good and excited about the possibility of going home.  But, after speaking with the doctor, it was too late to get the Potassium and Magnesium prescription from the pharmacy.  Also, since the Hemoglobin was continuing to drop, we were going to need to come back on Tuesday for a blood transfusion.  So, the doctor recommended that since we had to stay Sunday night anyway, we could just go ahead and do the blood transfusion so that we did not need to come back on Tuesday.  Travis was a little nervous since this was something new but everything went smoothly over the 4 hour process.  He did not feel a thing and there were no reactions.  We ended up watching a 6 hour marathon of “Jungle Gold” on the Discovery Channel.  Crazy stuff!  Travis was able to unhook all of his connections (IV, Monitor, etc) and we had a good night of sleep.

Monday was a busy morning of waiting for nurses, doctors, medicines, etc before we could head home.  By noon, everything was done except our new prescriptions ordered so Tony had to leave for work.  On the way home, Lynne went to pick up the prescriptions at our local pharmacy but it turned out they were out of stock even though the computer said they had it.  After hours of calling the hospital and calling around to find them, Lynne and Travis headed back down to the hospital to pick them up.  What a pain!  When you are on hospital time, you ask yourself: where did the day go?  Doesn’t matter…Travis made it home!

Even with our crazy schedule over the last 2 weeks with the soccer tournament and exploring all of this new territory, we made it through!  Since the chemotherapy regime was the same as Round 1 with Cisplatin/Vincristine on Day 1, Cytoxan on Days 2 and 3, and Vincristine boost on Day 8, we thought we knew what to expect.  But that just goes to show you, we never really know exactly how things will go with chemotherapy.

Love,

Tony and Lynne

Travis had his blood work done yesterday and they confirmed that his counts are good.  So, after two weeks of “quarantine” and laying low, he can go out again.  Yeah!  Although it has taken almost two weeks and he still has some stomach discomfort, we have a couple more weeks before we start round 2.  At least at this point, Round 1 is Done!

Thanks,

Tony and Lynne

We brought Travis home last night and Cisco was happy to see him!  He had a bit of a rough afternoon at the hospital with the nausea and a sore jaw.  We are doing the best we can to keep the nausea under control as the chemo flushes out of his system.  The sore jaw is something he experienced back in Houston during the first week of Proton Therapy and Chemo (Vincristine) where the salivary glands can be affected by both the radiation and the chemo.  In this case, it looks like the Vincristine is the cause and we are trying to control his pain with Tylenol and/or Hycet.  He did sleep good last night and we will do our best to keep him comfortable.

Thanks,

Tony and Lynne