24 Hours

24hours April 12, 2011
Hour 1 officially started at 7pm tonight.. *sigh* only 23 hours left.
I should start out more with hey, what's up?? What's going on? Well we have started the next phase of Tucker journey through chemo, and this phase kicks off with a bang- this is a 24-straight hour infusion of the chemo called METHOTREXATE. We have had this certain chemo before, but it was NOTHING like this. We have never ever had a 24 hour straight infusion of chemo before…. And this chemo showed up in the LARGEST IV bag I’ve ever seen….well I take that back, the largest IV bag of Chemo came with the world LARGES IV bag of normal IV fluids (see pictures). They are HUGE! I never knew they could come in XXXL sizes.

Well, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The day started out with surgery. Tucker had his pick-line removed and his official PORT put in *HAPPY DANCE*. The surgery went off without a hitch, Tucker did great. He was quickly transferred from surgery recover to the Oncology ward. When he started to really, really, wake up from his surgery THAT didn’t go so good and he was in a lot of pain. But we had the doc’s right in the room with us and in no time they had doped him up pretty good- but the pain got a little intense & out of control, I think he was past the point of relaxing into the morphine and his mind wouldn’t let his body relax- so they gave him a LARGE dose of IV Adivan- now when this worked it was like everybody in the room had a big sigh of relief. It was just what he needed, his BRAIN needed to relax- he was like just freaking out so much he couldn’t “feel” his morphine, but as soon as that Adivan hit, he immediately relaxed and THEN the morphine worked and he was fine. Lemme tell you- in between that time of him waking up and us getting his pain under control with the Adivan, I think I aged 30 years! I know I grew a lot more grey hairs today. This was Tucker’s first “trip” on Adivan, and it was a memorable experience. Now for the record I don’t think his little drug trip would have been SO intense if it hadn’t been mixed with A LOT of morphine.. but it was and OFF he flew!

Quotes from Mr. Tucker during his drug trip:
• Mom, why is there a hippy trailer by the door? It looks like the Scooby-do van, but it’s a trailer.
• Mom, why are we at your work?
• Mom, you are talking in a weird voice, you sound like a cartoon.
• Mom, everything is so funny, hey I bet your jokes would be funny right now.
• Mom, I feel so weird---wwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I just said Tucker, sit back and enjoy your prescribed controlled drug trip… he said “But mom, I don’t want to fly right now, maybe later, my wings are tired”.

He is doing much better now, and the chemo is well underway. The only hitch to the night is… each chemo comes with certain tasks that Mr. Tucker has to do while getting the chemo, on this one he has to- no questions and no getting out of it- HAS TO pee every 2 hours. They have to keep an eye on his kidneys because this large dose of this chemo can do some damage, so they test his pee every 2 hours and if anything comes back abnormal they can adjust it quickly, probably in the form of more meds to counteract the chemo, we don’t get to ever stop the chemo. I bet most of you are thinking- Peeing every 2 hours- that doesn’t sound so bad…….

YA RIGHT- he hurts, he wants to sleep- and he has inherited a lovely little WAKE-ME-UP-BEFORE-I’M-READY-AND-YOU-ALL-DIE type of disposition- I believe he got that from my little sister, Tamy. I remember trying to wake Tamy up when she was a kid and the only way to , safely, wake her was to quietly sneak up to her……. Then quickly poke, pinch, shake her really hard and then turn around and BOLT out of the room to a safe distance and then SWEAR it wasn’t me- it was CHARITY who woke you- I swear! ( I always knew it was Amber cause my dog would bite her....lol Tamy)

So I’ll keep you all updated on how the peeing / taking my hands into my life to wake up my child, goes as our days up here drag on. Right now its only 10pm and I haven’t had to run for my life, yet….. eerrr, I mean, wake up my son.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, my angel is coming up to hang with Tucker- Karleen, the best mother in law a girl could ever dream / ask/ beg to have. She has come up here to sit and hang with Tucker, more times than I can count. I’m so blessed to have married Justin, and then got this wonderful selfless woman who will sacrifice anything she has to help us in our time of need. Thank you Karleen, you’ll never know how much you mean to us.

Here are some pictures of the world's largest IV bag and chemo bag and a few other pictures from today.

Love to all, Amber…. Justin & ….. Tucker.


Pre-Op Tucker relaxing before Surgery Tucker Sleeping after surgery

Sleepy Tucker with his nifty new port

Picture of the LARGEST chemo and IV bag

Tucker sleeping while getting started on the 24 hour chemo (the black IV in the back is the chemo)