The Murphy Family

We had two consults last week. One for radiation and one for surgery. We didn't love them. The radiation one just gave us a rundown of how that will go and some of the side effects. Most of them uncommon, but a few, more than likely. He will probably not develop to his full height because of the radiation to the spine. That made me sad, but Logan said he has always wanted to be short. So, I got over that pretty fast 😂. He will be the only 7 year I know with tats. He gets a few permanent dots tattooed on his abdomen. He will have a mold made especially for him to lie in and then they line up the machine and fire away. He will have a treatment each day for 11 days. Some for his lung, some for his flank area (kidney, lymph nodes, liver, and surrounding area, then some additional for his liver. They don't think it was affected but have to be safe. The radiation also increases his risk for hardening of the arteries later in life and also cancer. But, a healthy lifestyle can really ...

So, we did a few weeks of out-patient chemo in between our in-patient chemos.  Then, on, Thursday, July 13th we started another 5 day in-patient run.  We changed our chemo day to Thursdays so that we can do our in-patient from Thursday-Monday instead of Monday-Friday.  We feel very lucky that Dan has as much vacation as he does.  One year at work his vacation got bumped up instead of traditional raise and that has been one of our greatest blessings in this whole deal.  Vacation days disappear really fast when you are in the hospital for a week at a time.  So, now Dan only has to take 3 days off instead of 5, which makes a big difference.  But, it also means we don't get weekends to rest up from the week in the hospital, but we decided the vacation days are worth it.  So, everything went according to plan.  Dan stayed the first 3 days and I finished it off the last night.  I really prefer to be home so I can keep our home running like I n...