The Roller Coaster Continues

Kevin’s move to Santa Clara was, in a nutshell, eventful. Several events collided to make “the perfect storm” of difficult issues.

First of all, Kevin’s platelet, red and white blood cell counts were so good that the radiation oncologists decided to restart full cranial-spinal radiation (instead of the focused radiation he’d been receiving for the past couple weeks). Kevin does not have any tumors outside the brain stem, but radiating the spinal chord is supposed to prevent cancer’s spread through the spinal fluid. While it’s great in the long run for Kevin to receive this cranial-spinal radiation, he restarted the full radiation treatment the morning before he moved. The increased side effects from the increased radiation, combined with a very large and rich lunch and the anxiety of moving hospitals, made Kevin nauseated around the time of his move. He also had very severe lower back pain, which we thought at the time was also attributed to anxiety.

That is, we thought anxiety was the culprit of his back pain until Friday afternoon, when Kevin passed a kidney stone. This unfortunately developed because he was very dehydrated. The cranial-spinal radiation dehydrates Kevin, and he was never one to drink a lot of liquids anyway. The nausea also doesn’t help him retain liquid, so he is now receiving IV fluids. His back pain is now lessened, so we’re hoping that he’s done with the kidney stones.

Despite this rather large hiccup and his waves of nausea, he is working very hard for the therapists at Santa Clara. He even had therapy today, on Saturday. Sunday looks like it might be more of a resting day. He really needs some relaxation after the past few days!