Introducing "Hicky"

Meet Hicky, Sigve's new very close friend. Hicky will be with him for the duration, and will be used for everything that needs to be administered intravenously. It's easier to se what he looks like now after he's been unwrapped. After Sigve has been discharged from hospital he (or quite possibly we, if I can do it without fainting) will have to learn how to take care of Hicky himself, which includes changing the bandage and rinsing him out weekly with a saline solution to keep him open and happy. The bandage to the right is from the bone marrow test, taken from the sternum. After a local anesthetic they drill through the bone with a tiny hollow drill bit, and suck out some bone marrow. Sometimes they also carve out some of the bone for testing. Yikes... In the future, I promise I won't go much in detail with stuff like that. I can't watch procedures like that, I know I would faint!

Before we left home yesterday we decided to take Sigve's new hair style to the next level, and cropped it even closer. It had actually grown quite a bit since the last trim in Sweden a couple of weeks ago, so he was due for a haircut now :-) In about 3 weeks time it will start falling out anyway, so he decided it's better to lose a little than a lot :-)
Sigve is still looking and feeling well, as I think the picture shows. Doctors and nurses here are surprised that he's so well and have not needed any kind of treatment so far, apparently most people in his situation have already gone through chemo. When I asked a doctor about the hair loss timing, he had to think for a minute, and said most people are already without hair when they get here. And as he has not had any chemo treatment yet, he said, Sigve is a chemo virgin LOL. And he added that that's a good thing, it will work better. The first course of chemo will start at 2 am tonight.

Today has been mostly about waiting. And in between there have been blood tests, bone marrow test and x-rays, and quite a few pills (don't remember what all of them were for, but at least one was to prevent cramping during the first course of chemo). He's also on preventive antibiotics as infections are inevitable, but they still try to avoid them as much as possible.

Time for some dinner!