Another Field Trip and 9 More To Go

Only 9 more radiation treatments left to go. Yippee!!! While celebrating that milestone I had to take another field trip up to the lab at the hospital today. Last night I again ran a fever of over 102 only this time I did show some other symptoms such as a brief period of the chills and night sweats. The fever was able to be controlled with Motrin. This morning I called the medical oncologist office and they had be go up to the lab at the hospital for more tests and to get chest x-rays done. Fortunately they were able to coordinate this with my appointment for radiation. This time they are not waiting for the results to come back and have started my on antibiotics. The medical oncologists office called in the prescription for us to pick up and much to our surprise they had a hard time finding a pharmacy that carried this drug. We ended up getting it at a pharmacy downtown. Of course distance is relative here and this pharmacy was only 10 minutes away. I have to mention again the benefits of having all of the treatment and testing options available locally. The lab, x-ray and radiation facility are all a the hospital and relatively close to each other. To get my radiation treatment, x-rays done and the labs took only 1 hour and 15 minutes. Very convenient.

At the same time we have been working on the pain medication for the last few days. The one that they had me on wasn't lasting long enough between doses. They did tell me I could up the dose but when I did that it essentially put me to sleep and still wore off before it was time for the next dose. The radiation oncologist then put me on a patch. This has some advantages. First the patch lasts 3 days so I don't have to worry about getting up to take it every 4 hours. Second is that its profile for delivering the medicine is pretty much uniform. This particular medicine also helps dry out the nasal passages and mouth so it helps with some of the mucus flow at night. One patch wasn't enough so we moved to two patches at a time. I am also still taking the initial pain medication. when both of the two are working I don not feel to much pain in my throat and mouth. When the initial one wears off I feel more pain but not as bad as before I was using the patches. Talking at this point is very difficult and can be painful beyond one or two word answers. I apologize to anyone in advance whose calls I screen. Its nothing personal but I do need to save my voice when possible.

I am excited that there are only 9 treatments left. At the same time I approach the next 3 weeks with some apprehension. This is when the impact from the radiation treatment is supposed to be the worst. Also I have my third chemo treatment next Tuesday. The major impact of the radiation treatment is the "mother of all" sore throats and mouth, dry mouth which is very painful at night and the skin on my neck is starting to feel like it has had a severe sun burn. To treat the later I am using a skin moisturizer.

The reason I said it is the next 3 weeks that I am approaching with some apprehension is that the radiation treatments will be done is 2 weeks but the impact of the treatments continues to make you worse for a week afterwards. Fortunately for that last week I won't have to keep making daily trips for radiation treatment. If I need to I can load up the pain medication and not worry about sleeping through an appointment. :-)

Update From The Front Lines

Today I met with the radiation oncologist to go over the results of the latest CT Scan. All in the news was very good. At the point the scan was done we were 60% of the way through the radiation treatments. The tumors have shrunk much more than that. The radiation oncologist said the goal is to have the tumors completely gone when radiation is complete. What they are going to do now is increase the dosage on the smaller tumors and reduce the overall target area. Hopefully this will minimize some of the effects this is having on my throat. There were some areas that they couldn't tell if it was scar tissue or tumor so they are going to target those as well.

At some point after this is done they will use the scope up my nose to check on the nasalpharyngeal area. If there is a suspect area that the can't tell if its scar tissue or a tumor then they will do a biopsy. Once everything is completed they will continue to run test on me every few months for the first year and then on going for the rest of my life.

So the report from the doctor in charge of the air campaign was all positive. At this point there are only 12 treatments left. Two weeks from Wednesday I will be finished with this phase. Yippee! I was told to expect the sore throat to continue to get worse for up to a week after the final treatment but then start to improve over the next 6-8 weeks. The taste buds on the other hand can take up to 6 months or more.

Another Field Trip

This weekend brought another field trip to the hospital. I started to run a temperature on Friday night. Motrin was able to keep it under control and on Saturday we called the medical oncologist. They sent me to the hospital for a blood test. The hospital actually is a pretty quick place to get the test done. They wanted to make sure that my white cell count was still OK. I didn't have any other symptoms and the white count was OK so we just had to monitor the temperature and control it with Motrin. By Sunday the fever seemed to go away.

We did mention to the doctor that the same thing happened at about the same interval after the first chemo. It may just be a coincidence but it seemed odd that it happened again at just about the same number of days.

One other thing to note is that at this point all medicines have to go through the PEG tube. Some things work out better than others. Motrin in an example of this. It really doesn't crush up and dissolve in water well. Its the outside shell that is the problem. Not too worry. The children's motrin is in liquid form and you can take that in a large enough dose to be the equivalent of an adult dose. I did the same with Benadryl.

Tomorrow I meet with the radiation oncologist and get the results of the latest CT scan. I can feel the tumors in my neck shrinking but I am curious as to how far along things really are.