Update on

[Guest guest]

Sorry everyone that I haven't been in here for a while. Hate to use

the excuse that I've been busy, but it is true. I should not be too

busy to come in here though.

My wife is doing okay. She had to postpone her 3rd chemo

treatment because her counts were rock bottom. She also started

getting a fever so that kind of scared the hell out of me. Took her

in on a Monday and they said her count was starting to come back up.

It was coming up so well that they wanted to reschedule the chemo for

that Thursday. But wouldn't have anything to do with that. She

told them " I'm taking this week off! " and scheduled it for last

Thursday.

We went in and talked to the oncologist and he said that the chemo

dropped her blood counts way too low so they were going to cut back

the dosage about 20%. He went on to explain that the way they figure

out how much chemo to give you is based on something they came up

with back in the 60's. He said it was outdated but that there wasn't

another method that has been proven effective yet. He stated that

they normally have to wait for 4-6 weeks after the 1st chemo

treatment to see what goes on. He said that the chemo kind of cycles

in 4-6 weeks. Once they see what is going on they can increase or

decrease the chemo from there. He said matter-of-factly that the

chemo really did its work on her this time.

She got her chemo treatment on Thursday and it lasted about 5 hours

again. She gets a little irritated that she has to sit there for

that long. Fortunately there are some other women in there that she

has developed a relationship with that she can talk to. Afterwards

she went and had her chemo pump hooked up. She was really tired

afterwards which from our limited experience is pretty much the

standard side effect she is getting. Normally she is down all

weekend but yesterday (Sunday) she was up and about. She had gotten

her energy back a little bit and it wasn't going to slow her down.

Other than that we are supposed to see the gastroenterologist

tomorrow (he discovered the cancer) concerning her Cat Scan she had a

couple of weeks ago. She has been feeling some pain off and on in

her stomach and rear end so we were a little concerned with that.

When we talked to the oncologist we told him that we were going to

see the gastroenterologist on Tuesday and told him why. He said any

pain concerns them so he definately wanted a copy of the results. He

went on to say that sometimes when they remove a section of the colon

that when it heals it can tighten up making poopin' painful. He

didn't say what they could do about it, but said that it could be

corrected. Her pain during the 2 weeks off from the 3rd chemo

treatment went down so I am guessing it has a bit to do with the

chemo drugs. I am hopeful that if there was something serious the

gastroenterologist would have called us immediately to discuss or

schedule more tests.

Has anyone else experienced pain in their stomach after chemo? Guess

we'll find out tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed that it is

nothing as I don't know if we can handle more bad news.

Dan