Official Day One

Good morning! We all slept pretty well last night and are ready for the official Day One (of 28 in the hospital) of the chemo treatment, which will be about 10 am. Sawyer will be getting a cocktail of five different drugs for his treatment, not all given at the same time though. We have a chart that shows what he receives on each day (some days nothing) and how long it takes to administer. Since it all comes through the IV it won't really be any different for him because he's hooked to an IV bag constantly.
He will also get prednisone (a steroid) every day in pill form, along with nausea medicine as needed.
His chest is still sore from the port insertion yesterday but it's to be expected. He's not in much pain but did take some medication to help with what he does have.
Overall he seems to be pretty comfortable.
Mark and I will be getting information on the Ronald McDonald house - there's one as part of the hospital that we can get a day pass to, and most likely could stay overnight as well. There's larger house a couple blocks away. But we've received a number of offers from friends for places to stay in Rochester and will probably take folks up on a few of them and save the bed space in the RM House for parents who really live far away or have no other options. Not many parents are going to have the private double room that we do.
We have also been told that our parking garage expenses will be covered by an organization called CURE (how wonderful!). We'll have to get a long term pass at some point. The social worker is gathering material for us, as well as working with Alfred-Almond school to make sure we're all squared away on available services.
Sawyer is looking forward to having some of his buddies come for a visit today. They're going to have to help us eat up a yummy cake and huge bag of (chocolate) Halloween candy that has made its way here already. (I've been good - only one piece of chocolate, so far, but I expect that to not be the case for very long!).
Mark and I are going to head out for a walk (he's already been out and about and back in before I ever woke up, very typical for him. He'll know this neighborhood in-and-out and be ready to give guided tours before long)