One more round of chemo is done! Now, we just have to get Brian through the next week of side effects. So far, so good. As I write this, it’s nearly 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night, and Brian is already more alert than he was after the last round of chemo. He stayed awake through the entire treatment, and he only took cat naps on the way home and after he got to the couch, which is an improvement on the three solid days of sleep he experienced last time.

With the extra week of rest he had due to his low white blood cell count, he was in good spirits and was feeling good today when we arrived at the hospital.

Second verse, same as the first...

This time, I came prepared with the tools to try to help him get ahead of the mouth sores he experienced on Saturday and Sunday after his last chemo session. Thanks to the help of Google and the amazing people who commented on this blog previously (thanks, everyone!), I came prepared with the following potential solutions:

• He sucked on ice chips during almost the entire infusion, and the nurses seemed to think there was enough anecdotal evidence to support that this might help him come the weekend.

• I bought him Manuka honey, and when we got home, I had him hold a spoon full in his mouth to get ahead of the sores. I’ll repeat this again tomorrow morning and afternoon.

• We refilled his Maylox-Benadryl-Lidocane mouth wash prescription so that if the sores do show up, he won’t have to wait for me to fill the prescription to get relief.

• I bought him the following ingredients for a smoothie:

organic pear juice
frozen sliced banana
organic berries strawberries
green supplement powder
maca powder
flax oil
The Herbalist Renew-U Tonic
The Herbalist Rasayana Rejuvenating Tonic

I brought all of the supplement ingredients with me to the doctor’s office so they could review them and ensure that they wouldn’t cause any adverse reaction with the medications he is on. They cleared them all for use, so I will start giving him the smoothie tomorrow.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the combination of all these things will make the mouth sores less intense and shorter this time!

It’s almost 7, so I’m going to sign off to watch “Storm Chasers” on the Discovery Channel. It’s October, which means I’m more storm-obsessed than any other time of year. For those of you who are interested, shoot me an email and I’ll fill you in on the weather stats we observed from my weather station during the storm earlier in the week. I’ll spare the rest of you from these details. =)