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March 30, 2005
By Margot | March 30, 2005
Sam is losing his hearing. I realized it last night after he said “What?” for the fifth time in a row. I thought back on the last couple of days and realized that he’s not hearing very well anymore. We did a hearing test before Cisplatin and he had perfect hearing and now, just like that, two weeks later, he has permanent damage. We knew that hearing loss was a side effect of Cisplatin but I stupidly thought we would avoid it. I don’t know why, a lot of the kids on the neuroblastoma listserv have hearing loss, some more profound than others. It was like a kick in the stomach when I realized it because it probably means hearing aids for the rest of his life. Relatively speaking, I know it’s a small price to pay but it still hurts to watch him struggle to hear. I called for an appointment with the audiologist today and will post an update when we have the appointment. It’s funny that last week I was praising the chemo for working and this week I am cursing it, cursing it, cursing it. I make myself think of my grandfather who wore hearing aids for much of his later life. He just turned them off when annoying people came into the room and he didn’t want to hear what they had to say (they seemed to be off most of the time my step-grandmother was talking to him). I know there is new amazing technology in hearing devices these days and I’m about to become very knowledgeable about all of the options.
Neil and I are reading every cancer research article we can get our hands on and it’s frustrating to read about all of the new gene therapies and vaccine therapies that are coming along and realize in ten years, they probably won’t be using such toxic stuff. I guess the glass half full answer to that is that ten years ago they didn’t even have our protocol available and we should count ourselves lucky.
On an up note, he’s eating better and throwing up less. He played with his friend Samantha today. He got to skip his pokey yesterday because his counts are so good so today I had to bribe him to do it but he was pretty cheerful about it.
Mom
Topics: Progress Reports | Comments Off on March 30, 2005
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