My Appt W/Dr. B

Saw Dr B yesterday (Thursday, 2/15) and he said that I'm recovering well and reiterated that the cancer was over 70% dead when he operated and it looks like he got the rest of it. They took an x-ray of me which he said was also clear (i.e. no pneumonia) and then he proceeded to remove 21 staples from my abdomen. That wasn't a lot of fun. In the end, he said I'm doing well and can go to FL anytime I feel like it now. He also scheduled a follow-up appointment in 3 months for a cat scan so that they can check how I'm doing vis-a-vis being cancer free - they'll do this every 3 months for the next year and less frequently over the following couple of years.

I have an appointment w/Dr I scheduled for Mon, Feb 26 at which point we'll go over the results of the pathology report in more detail and schedule my continuing avastin (i.e. the experimental drug) treatments. As part of the clinical trial, I will have an avastin infusion every 3 weeks for the next 6 months as follow-up to the surgery which should kill any lingering cancer cells (hopefully there are none but this is a precautionary measure). Avastin has no bad side-effects so it won't be like when I was going through chemo and the treatments should go pretty quickly - I intend to schedule them in the evenings after work.

I plan to head to FL a day or two after my appointment w/Dr I and spend about four and a half weeks there. I'd considered trying to move the appointment up a bit so I could leave earlier but, upon reflection, I decided that sticking around here an extra 10 days isn't such a bad idea as I prefer being close to the doctors/hospital in case I run into any problems.

Hard to believe I've been out for a week already. My brother-in-law flew up on Friday so he could hang out w/me and GOC for the weekend (well - go to Spamalot, really but I'm w/him on that). On Saturday, he and GOC spent the entire day cooking all kinds of great food for me (b-i-l is a fantastic cook) which they divided up into portions and then put in the freezer. It's been awesome and I haven't had to cook or order out all week. Sunday morning b-i-l flew back to FL, having had enuf of the cold weather, and Min took Gina and me to chinatown in queens for dimsum which worked out pretty well. Unfortunately I ate a bit too much on Sunday evening (quite a bit too much) and ended up in a lot of pain. Monday morning, I was still in pain and called the dr's office and the nurse diagnosed it as gas pains - she said I needed to eat smaller meals (duh) and walk more. Funny thing was the pain was in my left shoulder and left side, don't know how gas gets there. It was a pretty bad day and the pain meds offered no relief but they went away mostly by Tuesday morning. On Monday, in the midsts of my painful day, my father arrived - he and GOC were pretty concerned about me but there really wasn't anything to do but wait it out. GOC left on Tuesday morning so it's been dad and me ever since. Things have gone pretty well (and I've been eating much smaller meals). On Wed, when it was snowing out, we went on a couple of long walks and they seem to help a lot. Yesterday we walked to the dr's office which was a fair distance and then walked back afterwards. We even stopped at my office for while so I could show dad around and say hello to everyone. Not sure what we're going to do today but we'll figure something out and it's sure to involve walking.

My weight's down about 11 lbs overall since the operation but I expect that most of that loss occurred while at the hospital when I couldn't eat at all. I'll probably continue to lose some weight over the next couple of weeks as I adjust my eating habits but losing another 10-15 lbs will put me in a good weight range so everything should work out pretty well overall.

I'll be in NYC for the 10 days or so and am up for visitors so drop me a note if ur interested in dropping by. Take care everyone.

--Dr. D

P.S. I have just booked my flights to FL, I'll be leaving 2/27 and returning on 4/1. Yehaw :)