~Chemo: Day -9~

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Here at the hospital, the day of Eli's bone marrow transplant is considered Day 0.  Every day before is a negative day and every day after is a positive day.  If all goes well, the doctors hope to lift some (but definitely not all) restrictions by day 100.  Because Eli started his chemo today, it is day -9.
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Two days ago Eli went under sedation again to have his central line replaced.  After the first one was put in, it was infected within 24 hours and removed after 48.  Our main goal the past couple days has been to keep his new line extremely clean and to do everything we can to keep it from getting infected.  Everyone has been watching it very carefully and it has looked really good.  The plan was to pre-medicate Eli pretty early this morning and then begin his first 8 hour dose of chemo by 8:00am.  I finished feeding him and went to change his diaper and when I checked his line it was bright red and puffy! :S His nurse and doctor came and looked at it and couldn't believe he was already reacting to it again.  Because his first line got infected so fast, they kept him on a very strong antibiotic to help prevent his new one from getting infected so Eli's medical team is thinking it's maybe not infected but possibly just irritated.  Keeping the central line in is very important so they decided to put some steroid cream on his chest and watch it very closely.  A few hours after we put the cream on, the redness was almost gone so that is a huge blessing!

Because of the scare with the line, we got started a bit late with the chemo but everything since then has gone very smooth.  A new IV pole was brought in to accommodate all of the medications Eli is receiving around the clock.  Typically he only has 1 IV pump and now he needs 3.

Not happy about me taking pictures with the flash

 The pre-medications are given to help prevent an allergic reaction to the chemo.  If Eli was going to have an allergic reaction to the medicine, it likely would have happened within the first 15 minutes so we were feeling great once we made it passed that point.  Let's fast forward 8 hours because nothing out of the ordinary happened throughout the entire dose of chemo and that's exactly what Logan and I like!  The doctors tell us that it may take a while for Eli to experience the symptoms of the medicine but we are very grateful to have made it through the first day with him feeling so good.  They expect him to stop eating at some point but he ate like a champ today so we are feeling extremely happy and blessed!

Such a happy little fighter!

One day of chemo down, 7 more to go!