First Entry: May 26, 2003
On May 6, 2003, Anthony started his first cycle of chemotherapy at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Chidrens Hospital in Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital . This cycle consists of the drugs:  Vincristine, Doxorubicin, Cyclophosphamide, and MESNA administered over 2 days. The worst side-effect of these drugs (specifically doxorubicin) is mucositis. Mucositis is a condition where very painful sores appear all the way through the digestive tract. These sores were so painful that Anthony refused to talk, eat, or drink for about 5 days. He would not even swallow his saliva, and would spit it into a pail periodically to get it out of his mouth. He had to be placed on a nutritive IV and lipids to keep him nourished over this period. He was also placed on a Morphine drip of 0.6 mg/hour to help control the pain. Because of the mucositis, he remained in the hospital for almost two weeks. The good that came out of this cycle was that within two days of the drug infusions, his tumor noticably shrunk. To the point where you can't feel or see it externally.  Anthony even said: "Hey, where did my bump go?" Within a couple of days of being discharged from the hospital, Anthony was eating normally and was back to his old self. He enjoyed riding his bike (slowly),  and playing his Gameboy Advance and Nintendo Gamecube the whole time.   We even went bowling... The recovery period on this protocol is three weeks, so he is due to start the second cycle of chemotherapy on May 27, 2003. This cycle consists of Ifosfamide, Etoposide, and MESNA. These drugs do not have mucositis as a common side-effect, so we are not expecting the same problems again. However, these drugs are administered over a 5 day period. Between these two cycles, we visited the surgeon that will be performing the resection of Anthony's tumor. The surgeon is Michael Laquaglia at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Anthony will undergo surgury after the fourth cycle of chemotherapy in mid July. The surgeon was optimistic about the chances of complete removal of the tumor. He will remove the fifth rib, and portions of the two surrounding ribs. The gap in the ribs will be patched with a structural mesh that will have to be replaced as he grows.