I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. Cathy and I certainly did. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we had our nephew (Andy) and his wife (Kate) here from Denver, as well as Dan, Liz, and Laura. It is always nice when Laura stays with us instead of going back to her house at the end of the day … we don’t see her often enough, so it is a real treat when she stays. Cathy was the consummate host. She made a wonderful Thanksgiving meal (my only contribution was overseeing the turkey on the grill) and throughout the weekend made sure there were plenty of fun activities for everyone. I was still tired from radiation, so needed to rest during the days. Fortunately, I felt more or less fine otherwise. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I was able to eat small portions. Not surprisingly, the Thanksgiving holiday went by way too fast. I really hated to see everyone leave on Sunday.
The Thanksgiving holiday started out on a sad note, as Laura’s dog Che had died the day before. He had a stroke last year on Thanksgiving, and had recovered pretty well from that. Unfortunately, he had additional strokes about a week ago. And although he seemed to be recovering somewhat, the strokes were just too much. It was nice that Laura did not have to make the decision to have Che put down; he died naturally without being in lots of pain. Dan helped Laura bury Che on Thanksgiving morning, near where I had buried our dog about a year ago.
I was particularly happy to have five days off from radiation therapy (the machine was down on Wednesday, and Thursday through Sunday were scheduled days off). I have 13 more days of radiation left (12 down, 13 to go). I’m not looking forward to them, as they really wipe me out. I’ll do my best to fight the nausea with various pills and the fatigue with naps. I should do pretty well at the beginning of this week; it gets more difficult as the week goes on, as the effects of the radiation are cumulative.
Although I don’t have an appetite, and thus I’m not eating all that much, I felt pretty strong on our walk this morning. We went earlier than we have been lately, and unfortunately there was no sunshine in the streets where we normally walk. Because it was a bit cool, we decided to move our walk into the wide open desert, where the sun was shining brightly. It was great. Although Cathy noted that it is harder to hold hands while walking along the narrow paths in the desert, we managed nevertheless (I was highly motivated). After we walked together for awhile, Cathy went on a run and I walked back home.
I am still being “fed” intravenously for 10 hours at night. I think we will continue with that as long as I am receiving radiation therapy. Although it requires some effort on our (especially Cathy’s) part, and then I’m tethered to a backpack overnight, it is not too bad and indeed it is good for me to be receiving all those calories and nutrients. The TPN keeps my weight up, which is really good. I might even gain a pound or two while on it … it would be much easier to do that if I had an appetite!
I feel like we are starting a real push now in our recovery. Once we get through the radiation therapy, we will move on to other treatments that I believe I’ll tolerate better. We are looking forward to getting some good news with regard to the tumor and the tumor marker. It has been a while since we’ve had good news (any news, really). We are fighting hard to get that good news. No one fights their battle against cancer alone. I feel as though you are helping me in my fight. I greatly appreciate the support. I can’t thank you enough.
