It's hard to believe it but just about 6 months has passed since they pulled the PIC line out on my last chemo treatment. To celebrate its time for my 6 month CT Scan today. Yippee! Yes, I do know how to live it up don't I? Seriously 6 months is one of those milestones after treatment to see how you are, or more appropriately put, how the cancer is doing. Today's CT Scan will be the whole thing, head and neck, so it will take a bit of time. The only pain about this, aside from the IV, is that because I am allergic to the contrast dye they use for the scan I have to take some prep medicines 13, 7 and 1 hour before the procedure so it doesn't make for much sleep the night before. I probably won't know the results until sometime mid next week or so. My next appointment regarding the cancer is with the medical oncologist in 2 weeks though if I don't hear anything I will call before then for the results.
Speaking of medicines I dropped the last remaining one from treatments. I am now off of the last medicine from my treatments. I dropped the Fentanyl Patch this week. It takes a day or two to work its way out of my system and then up to a week of withdrawal side effects. This is one of those heavily controlled pain medications. I decided to drop it because I think most of the pain left in my throat is as a result of dry mouth. (Also the side effects from the patch were not all that fun.) Without the patch I can get a better feeling for how I am doing in managing my dry mouth condition. Now instead of doing the mouth rinses and such on a pre set schedule that doesn't take into account how my mouth and throat are doing I can more appropriately use them on a as needed basis. Fentanyl also helps contribute to dry mouth so hopefully this will allow me to produce more saliva.
No comments:
Post a Comment