Halfway There

Today I had my 14th radiation treatment out of a total of 27 which means I am halfway there and it's all downhill from here. Still handling the radiation pretty well, my throat's a bit raw but nothing significant yet. Chemo starts up again on Monday so those next two weeks are likely to be the hardest. I'm rugging up for it at the moment mostly by trying to keep active and eating and sleeping. Sleeping is the hardest tho, I only seem to be able to sleep about 6 hours a night - I will meet w/both Dr I and Dr M on Monday so I'm going to ask them about possible causes of the insomnia and ways to deal w/it. Still, I can just deal w/it for the next couple of weeks if necessary.

So tonight I'm going to see 'Borat' - I'm a bit dubius about the whole thing but I'm going w/a friend who lived in Kazakhstan for 3 years so it should be interesting to hear his views. Tomorrow night I'm going to a broadway show 'The Drowsy Chaperon' and on Saturday to 'Urinetown' in m/so. Still haven't decided what to do on Sunday so I'm going to give it a think but overall it's shaping up to be a good weekend.

Been listening to satellite radio and loving it. A lot of great songs that I'd completely forgotten about and new stuff that's really cool - at this point I recommend it to anyone who's getting tired of broadcast stations.

Finally watched 'Dinner at 8' the other night - really cool movie. Old style of movie making, looks and sounds like a play - the acting was fun and the dialogue was great.

Gotta head to the movie, wish me luck ;)

--Dr. D

Thoughts on the Tanning Booth

Yesterday I met w/my radiation oncologist, Dr. M. As I've mentioned, I meet w/him every monday so he can evaluate my progress and answer any questions I have - and I had a bunch of questions this week. One of the major concerns w/the combined radiation and chemo treatments is your white blood cell count - mine is currently at 3500 which is lower than normal but still in a reasonable range (normal white blood cell count is anywhere from 4500 to 8000; recall mine was at 5400 when they let me out of the hospital 6 weeks back) and, more importantly, it's been holding steady (in fact, slowly increasing). The cutoff for treatment is 2000 at which point they stop treatment temporarily and work on increasing the counts - this is not uncommon but I really don't want any delays. My weight has also been pretty stable over the last couple of weeks which is also good. They make very precise measurements when setting you up for radiation treatments to ensure that the radiation is focused exactly on the affected areas - if you're weight changes by a significant amount (+ or - 15 lbs) it can invalidate those measurements at which point they have to recalibrate everything. Today I found out that I don't get treatment on Thanksgiving and I was disappointed because it extends my treatment time an extra day. I have to have a total of 27 treatments and, as of today, I've had 12. They will do an evaluation a couple of weeks after radiation treatments have finished. Radiation continues to work even after the treatment stops because the radiation damages the cancer cells and they die off over time (cancer cells, unlike normal cells, do not have the ability to repair themselves) so they wait before doing the evaluation so they can see the full effect of the treatment.

Overall, I'm doing okay so far this week but still feeling a little queazy and fatigued. Not sure if it's radiation or the remnants of the cold I had this weekend but I've been taking it easy. Dropped in to see the master barber yesterday and my head is nice and shiny once again. Looking forward to seeing Urinetown this weekend (no 'ur in town' cracks from theatre members please).

cheers all,

--Dr. D

A Decent Weekend

Felt pretty good on Friday and had a good day at work. During the evening, my temperature spiked a bit and finally got to the point (100.5) that I had to go to the urgent care center so they could check my blood cell count. My blood cell count was fine; turns out I just had a slight cold so they sent me home and told me to take it easy for the rest of the weekend and drink plenty of fluids and eat soup. Slept kinda late on Saturday and my friend Alex came by for a visit in the afternoon/early evening, which was cool. Somewhere around 9:00 on Saturday, whatever was left of my insomnia dropped away and the fatigue finally enveloped me - I drifted off and slept all through the night and have spent most of the day in bed either sleeping or doing soduko. Feel really rested for the first time in quite some time.

No chemo this week but I do continue on with radiation. I should feel pretty good but the third week of radiation is when the side-effects start to manifest themselves so I'll just have to see.

Still planning to go out and have some fun this week while I'm off chemo - hopefully some movies and dinners out. Also planning to go to m/so on Saturday to see the final show of the theatre group's fall musical, Urinetown (and, of course, the party afterwards). Probably head to m/so a bit early so I can hang out for a while before the show.

I'll keep you posted on my progress,

--Dr. D