June 17-21, First full week

This week was fairly uneventful.  I had five radiation treatments and a chemotherapy treatment.  I feel a little weaker than I did last week, but not much.

I have finished 7 out of 25 radiation treatments and 2 out of 6 chemotherapy treatments.

This is me getting chemo.  One of the IV bags on the pole is part of my chemotherapy.  The other is just a saline solution.  If you look carefully you can see the IV tube going under my shirt under my chin - that's why the shirt is open so wide.  The chemo port is high up on the left side of my chest, not visible here.  They connect the chemo directly to the port without having to puncture a vein each week.

I'm starting to have swallowing issues.  Not horrible issues, but it's getting a little worse.  Kevin joined Martha and I for happy hour at The Stockpot on Friday.  I was hungry and ate too much too fast and suffered some for a couple of hours in the evening.  The rest of the weekend I was careful to eat more smaller meals.  That is working much better.  I am nervous about next weekend after five more radiation treatments and my esophagus is in a lot worse shape.

Recovering from chemo was just a bit harder this week.  I have chemo on Wednesday and so Friday is my "day 3", which is usually the worst day.  I woke up Friday and thought "I don't feel different at all."  I got ready for work,  ate breakfast, drove in, everything was normal.  The office is on the second floor, up two flights of 12 steps.  As I walked up those steps I could feel a small buzz through my muscles, arm and leg, that I did not remember ever feeling before.  Then I felt a little weird for a while.  But even so, Steve Z. and I did our normal 2-1/2 mile walk for lunch and I felt fine.  I think Steve is walking a little slower than normal to help me.

After I wrote the blog entry about anxiety I had crystalized a bunch of questions for my radiation oncologist on Tuesday.    I met with Dr. Sueng, who was filling in for Dr. Hansen who is on vacation.  Dr. Sueng was really friendly and pleasant.  I told him my concerns.  

I asked him, "how many Esophageal patients do you have per year, ballpark?"

He said "It is not a common cancer, six to eight patients a year."

I asked do they all lose weight because it gets painful to eat?

He said, "Yes, between 5% to 10% of their body weight during treatment."

This rocked me back on my heels.

I said, "treatment is only 6 weeks, right?  Losing 10% of your body weight in 6 weeks is not easy.  You basically have to stop eating."

He kind of nodded.

I told him I really did not want a feeding tube.

He said, "I do not like feeding tubes.  I'll try to help my patients so they do not need one."

But then he added, "but some patients develop a total aversion to eating, so what can you do?"

Obviously it is going to get really painful.  All I could think of is wow, this is going to be really bad.

Dr. Sueng basically agreed that it's going to be painful.  He told me about lydocain and pain medication.  He said for some of his patients they may stop treatment for a few days during week 4 and then continue on.  That can help some to make the last couple of weeks go better.  I just thought that would prolong the agony, but what do I know?

He told me, "try not to worry about 2-3 weeks from now.  Take it a day at a time."

Easy to say.

He also told me, about five times, "eat up."