Pretty
quiet day on 5 West, though it again started at 6 a.m. with a member of the
surgery team coming in. I suppose surgeons do surgery during later rounds
hours, but it limits our rest.
The
oncology team plans to use sorafenib for the consolidation drug therapy in
preparation for the bone marrow transplant. Sorafenib is approved for other
forms of cancer, including kidney cancer, but shows promise in attacking the
FLT3 mutation of AML (acute myeloid leukemia) that David has. So, they’ll use
it off-label.
In
preparation for the sorafenib therapy, the surgery fellow came in and
reinstalled the wound vac, to speed healing. Originally they planned to let the
wound heal naturally, with the stitches as guides, but everyone wants to get
back to treating the leukemia while it is in remission. Remission does not mean
there is no leukemia, it just means they can’t detect any. So the treatment
must go forward as soon as possible.
The wound vac sponge is a one inch thick oval
piece of dark grey foam. The surgeon tore it, rather inelegantly, into pieces the size
of Goldfish crackers and poked one into each of the one inch gaps between the
stitches. Then she attached a long piece of clear adhesive tape and cut holes
in the tape just above each bit of sponge. She then laid a long, narrow strip
of sponge across the top and another layer of tape. Cutting a hole in the upper
end of the sponge strip, she attached the suction cup attached to the tube that goes into the pump.
The
best news of the day is that David met with an excellent speech therapist for
his slurred speech. She gave him lists of words and sentences to read aloud, exaggerating
the enunciation, opening his mouth wide, and speaking loudly. There was great
improvement after just a half an hour of work. David’s speech had been slowly improving,
but this was a marked change. For the first time since May 2nd, he
was able to call in his own food order.
Any stranger would be able to understand him now. When I first saw him on May 5th,
I had a hard time deciphering his speech, and I’m his mom.
Posts
I would summarize today something like "better safe than sorry therapy" with the sorafenib & the vac and the speech therapist. Yay all the way say I, given my experiences these folks do it right.
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