Not much to update at this point

I hadn't planned on taking this long to post an update but I was hoping that my next update would be that I was swallowing again. At this point that hasn't happened but I do feel that my throat is making progress. The mucus problem is still there but it is different now than it was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago I was coughing up a larger volume of mucus and it was denser. Now the volume is less and it isn't as thick. Still all I can do at this point is choke down a very small sip of water. Somewhere along the lines of a teaspoon sized sip. If I try to take anywhere near a normal sip of water it comes back up faster than it went down. Fortunately I am aware of this potential and have things setup to handle it. :-)

The other two major side effects that I am experiencing are tiredness and a lack of some strength particularly in my legs. The tiredness is from a lack of energy. I have found out that while I can spend a day doing somewhat normal activities the next day I am going to end up sleeping most of the day wiped out from the previous days activities. I am not talking about doing anything strenuous just not spending the entire day lying around. From what I have read and what the doctors have told me the energy level is going to take some time to come back. Part of it is due to being inactive for the last 7 months and part of it, perhaps the majority, is from damage due to the treatments. This also applies to the reduction of strength. In the last 7 months I have lost around 50 pounds. A lot of that was muscle mass from lack of use. To help combat this I have started doing some light exercises each day. This is one area where I am trying to be careful about not over doing it. I have to admit that I have a tendency to want to rush my recovery but there is only so far that this can be pushed.

One of the first things that go through your mind when you complete treatments is that once the chemicals are out of your system your body will go back to normal quickly. Unfortunately that is not the way cancer treatments work. The damage they do to your body can take a long time to heal. There are things that you can do to help the process along but at the same time I need to be realistic about what my capabilities are.

There are two barometers that I use to gauge my progress. The first is the status of my throat. At this point it is still very sore and I can tell when it approaches the time to change the pain medicine patch. Along those lines are the mucus issue. I am told that part of the mucus issue is related to the throat. The mucus is designed to help protect the parts of the throat that are still healing. Once again I can tell when the ear patch that I wear is getting close to needing to be changed as the mucus flow increases greatly. The second indication that I use is my facial hair. At this point it is growing a bit faster than it was before but I can still go weeks without having to shave. This is also an area where there has been some change so I do know that progress is being made just slowly.

Other than that there isn't much more to report. I did have one interesting thing happen regarding the blood clot medicine. Apparently they were supposed to be monitoring with blood test weekly but somewhere that didn't get scheduled or communicated. When I went in for a checkup two weeks ago at the end of the appointment the doctor noticed that a particular test for monitoring the blood clot medicine hadn't been run in awhile so he had me give another sample after the appointment. I have to admit that I wasn't overly thrilled as I had already given a sample right before the appointment. It was at the end of the day and I had been kept waiting for an hour for the appointment and just wanted to get home at that point. They initially asked me to drop the new sample off at the hospital for testing. Apparently the courier had already left of the day. I said I wasn't comfortable with that and they ended up handling it. I also was starting to tire out from the day. So I got poked again (did I mention that one thing out of all this is that I have been cured of my needle phobia?) and gave another sample and then went home. Based on the results I am glad I did agree to the test even though at the time I wasn't too thrilled about it.

I ended up crashing early that evening but the doctor called around 8:00 and told Sue that I should stop taking the blood clot medicine and wanted to know if I had already taken it for that day. I was asleep and Sue didn't want to wake me so she put a large note on my computer monitor telling me to stop taking the medicine. That is where I normally stage my drugs to get ready to take them so I did see the note when I woke up and fortunately I hadn't already taken the medicine. Apparently there was some test that showed the level of the drug was too high in my blood or something along those lines. They wanted me to stop taking the medicine until that level came down. We figured it was serious when the oncologist calls you at home at 8:00 at night and kept asking Sue if I had already taken that days dose.

One thing to note about this drug is that the instructions are very specific in how you take it. You need to take it the same time each day and if you miss a dose you are not to double up on the dose. If you do accidentally take a double dose then they have you call your doctor immediately. That gave us some indication that they were serious about my not taking anymore of the medicine until they could test my blood again. I also looked at the side effects from taking too much of the drug, Wayfarin, and some of those side effects were the same ones that I was experiencing at that time during week three of the chemo treatment. Once I stopped taking the drug I did start to feel better.

The next week they tested me again and the levels were down so they started me on the drug again only this time they are monitoring me weekly. I went into the doctors office for another test that same week and things came back normal. At this point they have set up a standing order for tests at the convenient care facility 5 minutes from home. All I have to do is just show up and say I am there to be tested and the lab will draw the blood and perform the test. I don't have to schedule an appointment in advance I just show up. This makes it very convenient for myself. Generally the convenient care facility is pretty quick with running blood tests and I am in and out of there in about 10 minutes. They also have public WiFi access so I can bring my iPod Touch with me and surf the Internet or check out YouTube while waiting.

That's all there is to report at this point in time. The plan is to update once a week as things progress unless there is a break through in eating then that will get reported right away.