Did Berto Survive the Weekend?

Answer:  Yes!

Santa Cruz was nice but was not the relaxing time I was promised.  I spent most of my time helping my sister move.  That's fine since moving is such a pain without help.  At night, the wildlife came out and I got to see a few angry cats (raccoons) running in the bushes and some confused deer skittering across the road.

I also did some geocaching!  My family and I were at a spot where Roberto and I had tried to find a geocache but failed.  To my mom's and sister's astonishment, I easily found the geocache at a lamp post in a few seconds. I think the geocaching bug bit me because I'm thinking about going geocaching in Davis again. 

Roberto had some fun hanging out with friends who took him to Burgers and Brew and played plenty of board games with him. :)  I'm glad people were around to keep an eye on Berto.  He didn't feel well on Friday when we got his PICC dressing changed.  I'm not sure if he physically didn't feel well or had psychosomatic symptoms because we went to the hospital in the morning.  Nonetheless, he recovered nicely in time for the weekend.

It's a little scary that Roberto is not bouncing back as quickly after the third cycle.  This means I have to monitor him a bit closer.  At least the cycle coming up will be the last of this 12-week plan.  We'll be done with this phase of his treatment soon!!!  Just seven days left of Cycle 3.  :D

Cycle 3 - Day 14

Chemo - C1 - Day 5 - Today's Post Is Brought To You By The Letter V

The day started off well with no major incidents.  Once we got to the Infusion Center, Roberto got settled in and he was awake enough to ask for the TV to be turned on.  We started by watching Phil Mickelson give table tennis advice to Matt Lauer.  That probably was a sign that the rest of the day wouldn't be quite right.  After some channel surfing, we settled on a cartoon based on the "How to Train Your Dragon" movie.  The lesson of the day was that you should not steal dragon eggs from dragons that can spit acid and are able to camouflage themselves.  Kid shows are so practical these days.  Also, I was half-paying attention to the episode.

The rest of this post is mostly about vomiting, so you probably want to skip it or read it when you're not eating.

I got some nice chicken soup for Roberto's lunch and he drank quite a bit which was nice.  About a half hour later, he threw up which is not great.  Roberto says he doesn't know how feeling nauseated actually feels so we never get a good warning for when he might vomit.  Roberto does keep complaining about the smell of medicine that is emanating from his mobile medicine pump (which I'll explain tomorrow) and also permeating through the bed sheets and his quarantined bathroom at home.  I'm going to try to clean everything tomorrow and see if masking the smell with some incense will help a bit.

After we got home and right before dinner, Roberto vomited again.  At least it was before dinner so there was no food for him to throw up.  I made him some chicken soup with lots of broth and that seemed to settle his stomach a bit.  He felt better and even stayed up long enough to watch TV.  I got to learn about the secret world of racoons, or angry cats as I like to call them. 

Today was another challenging day, but we made it!  No more chemo drugs until the start of Cycle 2!  The nurse said that he will start to feel better after about a week.  Tomorrows goal: eat more than soup.