Monday, March 15, 2010

Plugging Along and Doing OK

I am finally back in the land of the awake and coherent. After sleeping the better part of the weekend, I realized that it was my new pain medicine that was turning me into a zombie. Plus, it didn’t even work that well. The pain in my hip started yesterday and was bad enough to put me to the ground. I hadn’t had hip pain like that for months. It is caused by the shots to boost my blood counts but I just couldn’t get the pain under control. I finally switched up the pain medicine this morning and the pain is now down to a dull ache, thank God. I am going to switch back to my old pain pills, and although I have to take them more frequently, they seem to work better and don’t make me so sleepy.

The new kytril anti-nausea patch is working great. I have experienced some mild nausea, but nothing compared to the previous rounds of Ixempra. I am not eating full meals or anything, but am able to eat toast, cereal, fruit and mild things like that. It is so nice to not be sick to my stomach all the time like I was previously. I talked to the nurse today and I’ll switch to a new kytril patch on Thursday, so hopefully I will sail through this entire round with minimal nausea. Could I be that lucky?

All things considered, this is the easiest round of Ixempra so far. It is still worse than the carbo/gemzar combination, but nothing compared to that first round and a marked improvement over the second round. I am achy, weak and tired, but have felt good enough to catch up on Season 4 of the Gilmore Girls and am moving on to Season 5 today. I haven’t had the energy to do much of anything other than sleep and watch TV. Reading requires more concentration than my tired mind is able to give, so I’m really glad I have some good TV to watch. Thanks to Peyton for giving me the entire Gilmore Girls for Christmas.

I wanted to catch you up and let you know I am still in the land of the living. This small amount of activity has left me exhausted, so its time to go rest for awhile. I’ll check in with you again later. But so far, so good.