Almost There

Weight: 130
Pain: 3/10
Nausea: 4/10
Depression: 3/10
Tiredness: 5/10
Swallowing Difficulty: 2/10
Medications: Fentanyl Patch, Vicodin, lots of others


Its been a while since my last posting so I guess another is needed; that and because people keep asking me "How I'm doing?" a lot.

Well, I'm kind of OK. I feel a lot weaker than before which is probably because I'm not as active (I don't walk all that much, although I try). I've also been losing some weight - I think its about 5 pounds in 2-3 weeks. Its been hard getting enough nutrition since my nausea has returned (although not as severe as before), and because of the pain that I get from swallowing food. I don't get the sensation of food getting stuck in my esophagus much anymore - which is probably a good sign. But it does hurt when food passes that part; its all the damage done from radiation.

So getting enough calories is a problem. The supplements that I've bought (Ensure, Bene-calorie, Boost) all pretty much make me vomit. They taste disgusting. Since I just had an infusion yesterday things are making me more nauseous than usual. I think milkshakes from Jack-In-The-Box would be much better for me, plus I know they taste a whole lot better.

Without the pain medications that I'm getting I would not be able to go through with the treatments. The Fentanyl patch works wonders - its the best pain management solution I've ever had - better than morphine or vicodin. I'm using a dosage of 50 for the patch. The dosage is from 12.5 all the way to 100. So I'm about half-way from the maximum dosage which is a lot of pain control. There are some side-effects with the patch, though. As with lots of other pain control meds, there is the side-effect of constipation. So yeah, I've been taking lots of laxatives lately. There is also the side-effect tiredness. I feel pretty tired and get lazy easily which just makes my body atrophy; I can feel the weakness all over me. But I think I'm slowly recovering since I'm starting to walk on the treadmill again. I've also noticed that I've been quite sensitive to sounds and light. I feel much better in quite and dim environments. This is probably another side effect from the patch.

I spoke with my radiation oncologist not too long ago and she told me, to my surprise, that I only had 7 more treatments to go. Thats 7 week-days of treatments. So in a little over a week I'll be all done with radiation and chemo. Yay! After that, I'll have about 2 weeks of recovery than another PET scan. And everything looks good, I'll have surgery 2-3 weeks after that.