Red pee (dad)

Tonights the first night I experience a full day of chemo. He fights with me to eat his dinner. I try every trick I know to get him to eat something. He's not easily fooled these days. He ate quit a bit of pancakes for lunch but needs to keep eating to help his recovery. He finally asks me to give him some of my water. We cant share water with him. We bring our own and he has his given at the hospital. He has one regular, one with a laxative powder and one with ice thawing. I pour the old one out and refill it with my water. He tastes and tells me he likes it better. I then talk him into taking a few sips of his calorie shake. I tell him to take a sip of it then the water to wash it down. He says he will but wants his water not mine for this. I laugh out loud and he just stares at me. Apparently his water compliments the chocolate meal replacement shake better than mine. Next task is to get him to do his mouth washes. These prevent sores in his mouth and throat. He takes the first with hesitation and a foul look on his face. This one he gets to swish and spit after 3 seconds. The next is not as easy a sell. Its in a syringe which is visually unappealing. A reminder of the many needles he's been poked with. It also taste like banana. In my experience anything they say taste like banana really taste like those banana sponge foam candies. Which I think tastes like crap. Nevan has never been much of a candy kid. Neither is Mom or I. And things that taste "like" other things tend to have a chemical taste too. Hence the fight to drink a chocolate calorie shake. Regardless he needs to take this to prevent the mouth sores. If he gets the sores he will be in even more discomfort. Which means he won't want to eat. Which means he will need to have a feeding tube put in through his nose down his throat. As if he hasn't had enough tubes for a life time. The doctor says most kids do it with less of a fight than one would expect. I have watched Nevan do things in the past 2 weeks that have completely surprised me. I have faith he can do anything.  Except that. If we can get him through the next 2 weeks they can install it while he's asleep. Maybe we don't really know how hard things will be with the side effects, the mood swings, mouth sores. appetite. We will try our hardest not to have that tube put in. He needs to eat and take meds. Day 1 spits mouthwash out all over himself in a violent refusal. Today takes with a little whining but does it properly. He says "i'm not really sure about this" with the sadest face he has. Day 1 didnt want to eat dinner. Today ate almost as much spaghetti and meatballs as mommy! Such mixed feelings it gives me. We spend everyday making him do things he doesnt like. It sounds so cute the way he says that though. So mature for a little guy. Next discussion we have is to take his allopurinol pill. I crush and put on a spoon of apple sauce. He sees me do it. Makes me press the pieces down into the sauce so he cant see them. Smart kid. He takes without a fight. Ill bury everything I can in apple sauce I think. Now on to something fun like a movie and books.
The night goes as well as it can. He sleeps well but its interupted by rain, thunder, lightning, nurses putting meds into his IV, taking his vitals, bells in the halls for other patients, nurses talking at their station. He wakes with the sweats twice. I rotate his pillows and change his matress pad. He wakes once for a pee. He hasn't pee'd in the toilet since we got here. It comes quick and often because of the IV. I pull him off the bed and stand him. I hold the pot up to him and he holds my shoulder while he sleeps through it. I hear that familiar trickle stop. I think I was half asleep too. I pull the pot away and then he starts again. Its dark and I already had the pot placed back on the ground. Yup he pees on me. On the floor, the bed sheets, my hand. The next morning I joke with him about his radioactive red pee and how he hit me with it last night. Im supposed to wear gloves so I don't get splashes of it on me. I could care less considering what hes done. Besides Im off work now and too busy to get to the gym. A little steroid pee couldnt hurt.
Most of the chemicals in his body do their job then get peed out. Which makes me somewhat grateful. I sit there while he naps and watch the IV drips, the steroids, the chemo, the antibiotics. In 33 years I have never had that many chemicals running through my body. Since the day he was born I have been trying to protect him from the world around him. The way any father would. He always holds hands in parking lot. He has a highend car seat locked down in a monster of a minivan with airbags all over the inside. Hes never out of sight when outside. Not even in the backyard. Doesn't drink soft drinks (doesnt like anyway). I picked out the best daycare in the city. Even Nana a well loved school teacher agrees. I use tide free, bounce free, and wash his bed like 2-3 times a week. Okay I might have OCD. The list is bottomless. I always have his health and safety in mind. So I sit here and watch chemical after chemical, day after day being injected into his veins and mouth and I go numb. The one thing I couldnt protect him from I cant even see and the cure, sorry "protocol", is a bunch of clear fluids that look like water to me. Helpless is not a good enough word. And it's an unfair judgement because we are helping him in anyway we can. But it's hard to trust 30 plus people you don't know fix a problem you cant even see. He had a bad fever and now we are here.