102) Hurley

I woke up this morning to the sounds of E vomiting. The poor little guy. He’s been having a rough go with his chemo as of late. About 8 weeks ago, his 6MP medication was given a small increase, and with it, we’ve noticed an increase in vomiting from what we only can assume is nausea.

I feel so badly for him, and I get so frustrated about the situation. He’s only 3 years old, and he’s a bit language delayed from the chemo. He’s really funny, and smart in a lot of ways, but he doesn’t yet have a large vocabulary. He can’t tell us when he feels ill, nauseous, or sick. We figure it out pretty quickly when he starts coughing, gagging, and then vomiting. It usually happens in the overnight period, or early morning. Previously, he’d have nausea limited to 2, maybe 3 days around the time when we dose him with what I not-so-affectionately call crystal meth-otrexate. Now, with the more frequent vomiting, we’re giving him more doses of his ondansetron to counter the nausea. Sometimes we’ll skip or miss a dose, and sometimes it runs out during the middle of the night, and the little guy gets a case of the pukies. I really wish he could tell us more, or that we could just somehow know exactly what he is feeling.

Getting E dressed today caused me to have a little chuckle. He has a kids’ “Hurley” shirt, and today, unintentionally I guess, my wife selected that for him to wear. The funny thing about this shirt is that “Hurley” is printed somewhat diagonally on the front, and it wraps around the sleeve near the shoulder onto the back. When you’re looking straight on at the shirt, it looks as though it just reads “Hurl”, which was kind of fitting given how our day started.