Treatment Week #3

Summary
I can't talk much now. My tongue and throat hurt too much. My ability to talk clearly is pretty close to zero -it requires a lot of effort to enunciate. I do mumble quite well.

I'm pumping formula now day and night. Having to get up and hit the bathroom dragging the feed bag and pump requires me to wake up a little more than I want. So I'm losing a bit of sleep. But the added consumption of nutrition needs to be done.


By my scale at home I'm down 8 pounds. The folks at the chemo and radiation offices think I'm only down 3 pounds. Little do they know I'm carrying around 5 pounds of rocks in my pockets.

Radiation treatments switch to 9:45 AM on Tuesday. Hopefully I can get more face time in at a client site if the treatment goes well and my stomach agrees to go along. I can't plan more than about 2 hours ahead these days. Matt Karp is one of our recent Eagle Scouts from the troop. He will be giving me a ride to radiation treatments Tuesday and Wednesday. Matt heads off to college in just a few days.

Tuesday night is also the 10th year anniversary for Sean's Boy Scout Troop. We're planning to attend that.

Details
Monday is chemo and radiation day. Even though I got the double whammy it was pretty smooth. I received a prescription for the first step in higher level pain killer: Morphine. The Tylenol isn't cutting it any more. The Hydrocodone may have caused me to vomit last Wednesday and it also seems to negatively affect my ability to sleep. So I'm a little leery of it. This Morphine must be pretty powerful stuff. The instructions say to take 1/2 ml. For comparison, the Hydrocodone is 15 ml. I haven't take the Morphine yet.


I also have an anti-fungal prescription for a possible case of Thrush. My tongue feels about 2" thick and it's still white but not nearly as bad. Thrush is common with chemo patients. Maybe should quit kissing all the toadstools/mushrooms (fungus) in the back yard.

Today I learned that one the drugs in the chemotherapy cocktail mix is a diuretic. That might explain why on chemo nights I'm hitting the bathroom about 8 times. Ugh.

On Sunday (yesterday) I was pumping the new formula Nutrin 2.0 instead of the IsoSource 1.5. About 3/4 of the way through two cans my stomach started to hurt at 2pm. Thinking the new formula might be the cause I stopped the pump. After 30 minutes my stomach still hurt. I tried a Famatodine (acid reducer) again and that didn't seem to have much effect. I missed 6 PM church because A) I wasn't sure if my stomach hurt due to chemo induced nausea, B) my stomach hurt from the new formula or C) it was gas/constipation.


What seemed to work was to eat constantly. I had a small cup of yogurt and felt fine. Then 10 minutes later my stomach was back to hurting. So I downed another yogurt. Same results. It was getting late and eating constantly wasn't going to work with solid food. So I hooked up the feedbag, filled it with two cans of IsoSource 1.5 and started pumping. Case closed. No real issues today.


I will need to try the Nutrin 2.0 again as I have two cases of the expensive stuff and it requires fewer cans per day than the IsoSource 1.5.

I can still eat some soft foods. I tried mashed potatoes and beef gravy tonight from KFC. I ate it but it burned my tongue and roof of my mouth - too spicy. Still I got a bowl of it down. I'm currently working on half of a small Watermelon as I read this.

Chicken soup is still working for me. Temperature matters. Cold, room temperature or hot and I can't eat. Warm is good. But as long as it takes me to eat it I need reheat even a coffee cup amount of it. I tried an Apple Fritter from Lamars last week and thought it was pretty good. So I bought a second one for breakfast the next day. That didn't work out at all. I could stand to take two nibbles and that was it. Maybe the texture of a fresh fritter matters.

Simple, Vanilla Bean Ice Cream works. But I need to hide it from the kids. They'll go through that faster than President Obama goes through deficit spending money. Cream of Wheat is feed I need to get back to eating.

Cathy, Sean and I made it to the Scottish Festival on Saturday. There were some interesting things going on. I Saw some swords that I suspect are only useful in SciFi/Fantasy novels and highly choreographed battles.

I was walking pretty slow and used my trekking poles for support. The Festival really didn't seem the same as I couldn't enjoy the Fish and Chips and couldn't take part in the Scotch tasting booth like I did last year. Beer was out of the question also. The four block walk home was tough. I was pooped. Cathy and Sean went back later for the concert. I stayed home and performed my nightly dental/throat health procedures:

1. Flush the sinuses - this doesn't hurt and does a lot of good clearing things up
2. Floss the teeth - this hurts
3. WaterPik the teeth - this has worked well over the past few weeks. But the jet of water might be too much. I think I'm blowing out chunks of my gums. I'll try a lower setting.
4. Brush the teeth - this hurts my gums like crazy even through I'm using Biotene toothpaste
5. Mouthwash - this is the Biotene stuff that says it doesn't burn. It does but not nearly as bad as your normal mouthwash like Listerine.
6. Fluoride the teeth - this involved squirting a special bottle of fluoride (comes from the dentist) into the dental tray and then installing the trays on my teeth for at least 1 minute. I think the fluoride irritates the existing sores on my tongue and gums. On the bright side it seems to really put my salivary gland into producing overtime. Tough trade off.
7. Wear a mouth guard at night. I'm grinding my teeth together and that is causing headaches and perhaps issues with my tongue. An antiseptic throat spray helps a bit with the tongue sores. The mouth guard is different from the dental trays which are too flimsy to provide any protection. It's the same mouth guard I used in TaeKwonDo sparing.