A Visit With Dr. Cutie . . .

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from my oncologist's office wanting to change the time of my appointment today. My immediate response was, what appoitment???? I hadn't been notified!

Well, turns out they probably mailed the notice and either it got hung up in the Christmas mail or it got delivered to the wrong house (our postie delivers at least one envelope to the wrong house twice a month; we usually get mail for the folks north of us). Anyway, we were able to get ourselves together and get down to CancerCare for this morning and had a visit with Dr. Cutie.

It was just a follow up to see how I'm doing with the chemotherapy. All in all, it's going pretty well. However, the radiation oncologist has decided to postpone radiation therapy because of the size and location of the tumor. He wants to wait a while for the chemo to shrink the tumor, then reassess the situation. The problem at the present time is that the tumor is fairly large so they would have to irradiate a pretty big area right around my stomach, and I would probably suffer more serious side effects than what I get now with the chemo.

Dr. Cutie says to consider this not a setback, but a reconsideration of the situation, and probably a good thing.

I will be going for a scan, either a CT or an MRI but likely an MRI, after this round of chemotherapy ends (last treatment is January 12, then I take a one week break and start another round of chemo). This will allow the Eviction Team to have a good look at whether the chemo is giving Charlene any problems. Let's hope it's making her sick as a dog.

I also got a new pain prescription - slow release morphine. I take two pills a day and can take Percoset as well if I need it. I'm hoping this drug will work well. Last week I had a couple of pretty miserable days, painwise, and actually took TWO Percosets at once because one just didn't cut the pain. Dr. Cutie informs me the street value of the morphine drug is $10 to $15 per pill. It's supposed to be good stuff! I guess I'll find out tonight when I take my first dose.

-- Lori