Cutting the dex

Yesterday’s chemo visit went well – it’s about an hour drive in traffic, and the first snow of the season was in the forecast for the afternoon, but mom and Wes were home earlier than I expected and before the roads got nasty.

It was also an exciting day because his morning dose at home was the last of the dexamethasone in his current treatment plan. Dex is a steroid that’s a common part of leukemia treatment, but it has a number of common side effects, and Wes exhibited several of them.

On the positive side, it’s made his appetite expand dramatically; it feels as if he eats continuously, and that’s not really far from the truth, but his tastes have narrowed at the same time. 90% of his intake lately has been rice or noodles, either with butter and salt or marinara – sometimes he changes his mind between the kitchen and the living room – and an occasional bowl of mac n’ cheese. He’s got no interest in sweets – no more bribing him with a cookie –  and his morning routine with mom of homemade pancakes or French omelettes is all but forgotten. He eats rice or noodles first thing in the morning, all the way through to right before bed, and often wakes up in the middle of the nice chanting “rice” or “noo-noo”. Last night, he brought a bowl of noodles to bed with him, just in case. Our doctors and nutritionists are happy with his weight and keep reassuring us that the most important thing right now is that he gets enough calories and carbs, which doesn’t seem to be a challenge at the moment. As I type, I can hear him stirring, and yelling for rice, so I better make this quick.

The more difficult change has been in his personality and attitude; he’s always been pretty light-hearted, though sometimes serious, but almost never nasty. Since the dex started he’s developed mood swings that we’d never seen before, and has tended to level off on the morose end of the spectrum. He gets easily frustrated, yells and even rises to anger, an emotion we’d never seen in him before. It’s hard to see, knowing how hard it is for him, and certainly for Stephanie and for me.

Wesley’s sweet, gentle little soul is being put through the ringer – not just by the cancer, but by the cure, and we know we’ll help him find his way back. For now, we’re just thrilled the dex is done and perhaps whatever that was doing to him can go away too.