Politely say Goodbye

Today was day 8 of radiation with oral chemo.  According to what I was originally told I would be having 28 - 30 treatments.  The process has changed slightly since the beginning which I'll explain in a minute.  Since chemo education I was told I would have an appointment with my Oncologist in weeks 2 and 5.  Since this is week 2 I have had 2 doctors appointments.

Monday I met with my Medical Oncologist.  We talked with her and much of the conversation revolved around nausea and how to handle it.  You have to know on chemo my stomach is often "off".  It seems food helps much better than most anti-nausea meds.  The only by-product is the scale keeps going up.  It's not my favorite thing however I forget about the scale for the short moment the food goes in my mouth.  The Oncologists words were "choose foods with fewer calories".  To make a long story much shorter, the efforts to reduce nausea were 1. Reduce Chemo down to 1500 mg from the 1800 mg I was taking previously, 2. Start taking another anti-nausea med at bed time.  Per the chemo reduction I feel like it is making a small amount of difference so the nausea isn't as bad as what it has been. I would like to share as many of you don't know (since it didn't make the last post) is that I ended up skipping Friday's second dose of chemo due to nausea and what results from it if you don't do anything.  I would politely say goodbye to nausea at every occurence.

On Tuesday I had my treatment and then met with my Radiation doctor.  I informed her of the changes my oncologist made and we talked more about handling the nausea.  We talked a little bit that food worked better than meds.  She said that was ok and that they just didn't want me losing weight.  The other thing we asked is how many radiation treatments I was getting.  She said that during the mapping process they decided on 28 treatments for my case. 

Later that night I took my new anti-nausea med at bed.  I was extremely tired getting up this morning and continuing throughout today. later I read per symptoms on the med sheet that drowsiness was a side effect. This evening, after radiation I started becoming more alert (which should have happened this morning).  Per that med we are suspecting that the sleepiness was a result from that.  We're discontinuing that med and will talk with my Oncologists office tomorrow.  I recieved a phone call yesterday as I waited for my Radiation appointment that I was missing a scheduled weekly blood draw. They conveniently scheduled my weekly labs right during my radiation appointment so I will need to figure another place or another time to have my labs drawn.

I would appreciate your prays for the next 20 treatments.

~Kent