Chemo #1 done!

The first chemo treatment is done. We got there at 2pm and the nurse gave Nick an IV and drew blood to check his blood counts, which were normal since he hadn't had any chemo yet. The nurse started the zofran (anti-nausea drug) through his IV. He had to have a test dose of the bleomycin to make sure he wasn't allergic to it. We had to wait an hour after that before he could get the bleo. In the meantime, the nurse gave him the adriamycin (IV push), the vinblastine (IV push) and the dacarbazine (IV drip-1 hour). He was then able to get the bleo (IV push). We left at about 5:30. The dacarbazine was a little uncomfortable going in, but other than that, he feels fine right now. We have a prescription for zofran and compazine. He'll take the zofran tonight and tomorrow and the compazine if he needs it, but hopefully he won't. It basically went pretty much as we expected. Dr. Koc stopped in to see us and he had one unexpected thing to say. He had presented Nick's case to the Lymphoma board, where the possibility of doing 6 cycles of ABVD without radiation was brought up. Apparently the success rates are pretty much the same for 4 cycles + radiation and 6 cycles without radiation. So now we have that to think over. We also got copies of his PET and CT scans. We'd been curious about the sizes of the tumors in his chest and also the size of the node removed from his neck. The node removed from his neck was 2.5x1.8x0.8 cm. The largest mass in his chest was 6x3.1cm. We'll have another update tomorrow about how he's feeling!