Cycle 4, Day -3: Sadness and Double Vision

Today Steven got cyclophosphamide, along with mesna for his bladder. For nausea, he gets zofran and ativan around the clock with benadryl as needed,.

During his third cycle, he had bad bouts of depression and confusion which were attributed to the ativan, but once he was out of the hospital and still taking ativan the first week, the confusion and depression disappeared.

Yesterday and today he's been excessively tearful during the day when he's getting all the drugs. The chemo drugs are usually done by early afternoon and by late afternoon he perks up.

In addition to the terrible diarrhea he gets with cyclophosphamide, today he informed us he was seeing double. Several people came to see him, finally noticing some strabismus, one of his eyes wasn't tracking with the other eye. They speculated again that it might be the ativan, so we stopped it after noon today.

His double vision improved after several hours, but the strabismus is still apparent. He'll have an appointment with an ophthalmologist later this week to see what's up. He's not had any eye problems previously.

If the double vision returns, they'll do a CT scan. Tomorrow we'll try a reduced dose of ativan prior to his chemotherapy.

- Kathleen