Day 5: A better day

Its Sunday to I have two days off from treatment. I definitely feel better today and was able to get some work done. I am not as fatigued and for the most part I don't notice my stomach. Its hard to figure out how this week is going to play out. Last week we started with a bang on Wednesday with both the chemotherapy and the radiation. A definite double whammy and it was difficult to figure out what was causing what symptoms. My guess is the nausea and stomach feelings were from the Cisplatin. The swelling in the throat was clearly from the radiation. That has gone down in the last two days but next week I get 5 daily treatments in a row. My guess is that I will start to feel it on Monday and then build to Friday but I won't recover as much over the weekend as I did this last weekend. Fortunately I don't have another chemo for 2 and a half weeks. My next chemo is scheduled for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Its a bit of a bummer to have it then but at the same time it gives me some more down time to recover from it.

Tomorrow I have to push the GI specialist about getting the peg tube installed. I am not looking forward to it but it is going to be a critical part of keeping my healthy to fight the cancer cells. I did some research on why radiation causes fatigue. There doesn't seem to be a strong agreement but one opinion is that the metabolic activity required to repair the damaged cells causes part of the energy drain. Eating properly will go a long way to helping that. From what I have read a feeding tube is really more of a psychological issue than anything else. I am not sure I agree with that but they do over 200,000 of these a year in the country many times for cancer patients. I view this as a necessary condition in the battle. The problem is that it appears to be up to me to get it scheduled. I called the GI and tried to get with the scheduler twice but didn't get a call back. Tomorrow I will ask at the radiation oncologist office to see if they can get it going. They setup the original appointment. Ideally I would like to shoot for Thursday. It has advantages personally and its about the time when I won't be able to get much done anyway.

One other thing I am finding is that I need to stake out a good position to rest in. Lying down on the coach or the bed too much can cause poor sleep hygiene and isn't very useful. You lie there with your eyes closed but don't really sleep.

I probably won't continue posting every day. Just once or twice a week or when something significant happens like my next chemo.