Marcus Update

Tonight's the night that my nephew, Marcus, starts his chemo. Jess and I talked to him on the phone for awhile this evening. Marcus is in good spirits and seems to be doing very well. He has to stop eating by a certain time in the evening, take his anti-nausea medicine at another designated time and then one hour later take his 4 chemo pills. If he gets to feeling sick later in the night he is allowed to take the anti-nausea meds every 6 hours or so. We are praying for a peaceful and uneventful night for him.

Tomorrow my sister, Karen, will take him to the LDS hospital in Salt Lake City for his radiation. They made a mask for him to wear during the radiation. Apparently Marcus's doctor is also an artist and asked Marcus what he wanted designed on his mask... Marcus said GARFIELD! So he is anxious to see what his mask looks like tomorrow. I bet it will look great. I asked him to take some pictures - I'd like to see what it looks like too.

Here's the plan:
Marcus will take his anti-nausea meds and chemo meds every night for 6 weeks. He will go to SLC for radiation 5 days a week (Monday - Friday) for 6 weeks. They will check his bloodcount frequently and make sure he is tolerating the treatments. After the 6-week treatment plan they will wait for a month and then to an MRI. The reason for waiting a month is that the radiation can cause swelling on the brain and they want to give him time for that swelling to go down to get a good reading with the MRI.

Marcus told me that he is going to take 3 classes at school in the morning every day before going to Salt Lake for the radiation. He has been out of school for two weeks and he MISSES IT! Amazing... a 15yr old young man wanting to go to school? hehe... He's a great kid!

I spoke to my sister right before Marcus was to take his chemo pills and I can tell that she is quite worried... and who can blame her? I just wish I could be there to.... well, there's not much I could do, but hold her and maybe help her with the driving? Even though we are miles apart, she knows I'm there with her in spirit and I'm just a phone call away. I think that once they get into a routine it will be ok. I hope that Marcus tolerates the treatments and does well. I'm sure he'll kick the cancer's butt!

I set up a carepage for Marcus at www.carepages.com - carepage name: marcusrussell
He went there today and posted a couple of comments. I talked to him about being a manager of his own carepage so I set him and his mom to be managers and they can update as they like. Feel free to visit his carepage and leave him some messages.

I have added both Jessica's blog and Marcus's carepage to my links so you can visit them anytime you like.

I'll update when I hear more. Thanks everyone!