Cycle 4, Day -1: A Visit to the Opthalmologist

Today was Steven's day of "rest", no chemotherapy drugs today.

We tried beginning our day without ativan, around 9:30 am he started vomiting and we gave him another reduced dose. That helped him enough that he was able to do some stuff with the physical therapist, he played hockey, pedaled a stationary bike, and did an obstacle course.

I met a woman and her little boy Zach when we were at St. Jude for Steven's radiation back in October. We became acquainted through a mailing list for pediatric brain tumors, then met in person at St. Jude.

Zach has a brain tumor, a pilocytic astrocytoma in his optic chiasm, which affects his vision. Ironically, Zach was at St. Jude today to see the opthalmologist today also, and he came to visit Steven in his room.

Steven saw the opthalmologist today around 1:00. It looks like Steven's vision has deteriorated a little since his exam in January, but his three-dimensional vision looked good and the strabismus we saw on Monday is much improved.

The opthalmologist feels very strongly that the problem is temporary and is related to the ativan Steven was taking.

We had a long conversation with the bone marrow transplant doctors when Steven returned to his room about whether or not he should take any more ativan. The upshot was that we'll stick with oral ativan in the smaller dose, which has so far never caused any of the problems we've been seeing recently.

Tomorrow Steven gets his stem cells back and we should be discharged.

- Kathleen