Round 1.... DING DING DING DING

Hello my fellow Americans.....


What a crazy couple of days Josh has had. It started Wednesday morning with a six hour treatment of the drug Rituxan. Rituxan is a monocional antibody, this medicine changes the way the body's immune system works. The drug targets a specific protein within the cancer cells and stops the cancer cells from growing. Wednesday was the easy day, no real problems and Josh's good friend Josh Roberts came by to keep him company which was awesome. Wednesday he didn't sleep at all, which I'm sure didn't help him get through the day on Thursday. His day started at 7:45, unfortunately I have already missed so much work I wasn't able to be there with him, let me tell how stressful that was. We both had no idea what to expect, we thought it was only going to be a about a four hour process....boy were we wrong! The nurse started by giving him an IV to administer the drugs, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts of trying to get the IV in his veins they determined his veins were too small to inject the drugs into his arm. The potential problem of having chemo administered into a vein that is not big enough is the drug can leak out of his vein and destroy the tissue in his arm. It's crazy to think that this poison is being injected to his body, kinda a scary thought. So they decided he needed a PICC line in order to administer the chemo. A PICC line is a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is long, slender, small, flexible tube that is inserted into a peripheral vein, typically in the upper arm, and advanced until the catheter tip terminates in a large vein in the chest near the heart to obtain intravenous access, Josh's was 50 cm. As soon as the procedure was complete he began to experience chest pains, he finally got back to the cancer center and he actually though he was going to have a heart attack, when in actuality he was having a panic attack. He has never had a panic attack so he had no idea what the heck was going on. Thankfully Jerry and Jeannie Wampler were there (close family friends, who happen to be going through the same thing) and they were able to help calm him down. Vanessa Long also stopped by and hung out with him for a awhile, which was a big help as well. So then about half way through he was told they could no longer proceed without a echo cardiogram, so he had to rush over to cardiology to get that done, thankfully his heart is in good shape. As soon as he returned to the cancer center he started to feel very nauseous so he started to go over the complications with his nurse, it had only been an hour since the chemo was administered. His nurse was awesome and was able to get him the proper medications to get him through the final two chemo doses. Luckily, Melissa (Josh's sister) who is VERY pregnant came and waited for him to finish up. They were able to administer the final two drugs and was finally able to get out of there around 7:00pm, YES 7:00pm!! What a day, huh? He is on a ton a medications, among all the other ones that are administered at the hospital, he's favorite is the one turns his urine bright orange! Haha yes he is a freak show! Last night was one of his better nights of sleep, he slept like a rock from 11 to about 5, he needed that! So for the next five days he has to go to the hospital for hydration and get a shot called neupogen which keeps his white blood cells from dropping to zero. He made it through probably the roughest day of this whole thing like a champion, everybody was SOOOO proud of him! We love you all and can't thank you enough for all the support, it is truly an awesome thing to have so many people behind us. As hard as these six months are going to be, we know everything will work out and Josh will come out on top a stronger better man! Thanks again to everybody.... YOU GUYS ROCK!