Home and somewhat happy

We are home and pleased with the way things went today. We were able to go up last night and swim a little at the hotel and make it a little bit fun for Grant. Then bright and early we were at Scottish Rite for our CT and skeletal survey. After that there was some scheduling confusion (imagine that!) with the PICC Team. After a couple hours we finally ended up moving the whole operation over to Dr. Rapkin's office. It worked out fine. Then they had a little trouble getting the line placed and had to try a few different times. Grant was drunk and happy though. He didn't mind that it took so long. The PICC runs up his arm from his forearm to his heart. We learned that his chemo doesn't go through the vein, it is a catheter that goes on the inside of his vein to his heart. This is good because his chemo will burn his vein. In fact, it can't touch his skin or he'll have to have surgery and a skin graft! EEK!
He handled the chemo well. His stomach was upset and he had a little "bathroom time" tonight. But otherwise he's doing fine. He doesn't want to use his arm much, but I think he'll get used to it. They said that most of the sickness should go away within 24 hours of the chemo. That is tolerable. The next stress is that after 6 wks. He'll go to a every 3 week infusion of the chemo plus a daily PILL! You know we didn't do well with PILLS! So we are going to work on that for the next 6 weeks with swallowing vitamins and hopefully we can make that work. If not it will be a long 6 months to a year.
Gracie stayed with the Websters and we are so thankful to not have to worry about her comfort at all. It is wonderful to have such great friends that we know she is comfortable at their home (and we know they'll hold her to the same standards of behavior that we will!). She lost her tooth today that she has needed to loose for months. It had a tooth almost all the way in behind it and as soon as I could find time, we were going to have to have it pulled. So she is thrilled to have pulled it today! Hopefully our tooth fairy won't be a flake and she'll show up tonight!
Thank you so much for your prayers! We feel much better now that we are underway. We'll go back on December 22 for his next treatment and then every Monday for 6 weeks. Dr. Rapkin even approved a trip to Orlando for the Georgia bowl game on Jan. 1 (and maybe a quick hello to Mickey!). A home health nurse is going to come tomorrow and meet us. They will be our "local contact" should we have PICC issues and they'll be supplying the materials for the daily flushing and to change the dressings weekly if we don't have it done in Atlanta. We are going to stay home in the morning to let him rest and adjust to the line a little more. I'll try and take a picture so you all can have a visual.