Thursday, July 17, 2014

Chemo - round 8

Round 8 of chemo is now behind us. 
Chemo round 8 today! Got one of the coveted lake view chairs #chemo #cancersucks #oohlala @kghconnect

So far, at least when I last talked to Mark this morning, so good.  We have discovered that each round is different.  Through trial and error, we're trying to figure out how to manage things for him.  Mark reacts to the dosage differently and the actual time spent in the chair at the clinic is never the same.  Yesterday, for example, was very noisy and vibratey.

George St @ King St will be closed for a while #ygk #traffic #kgh #noparking He was having a tough time getting comfortable in the chair when I arrived and while there were not many folks in the clinic for treatment, the volume level was at 11.  There is a big construction job happening on the corner of George and King Streets (the corner the Cancer Clinic sits on).  Work is being done on the water mains so there is a giant jack-hammer  hammering at the limestone beneath the pavement (we had the same thing happen one summer on the street in front of our previous home - the cost of living in the "Limestone City").   Every now and then, the jack-hammer would start up again and the whole building would vibrate.  There was a lot of noise but mostly, what we noticed was how much we were feeling the vibrations, in our feet, in our stomachs, in our heads.

At the same time, the gentleman in the chair next to Mark, was sparked out, snoring loudly.  It was actually kind of cute that in the middle of all of this noise, shaking and chaos, he was zonked out.  I was a little bit jealous of his fabulous napping skills.

As far as his side effects from the actual chemo goes, things seem to be better this round.  Mark started taking some of  his management meds preemptively, yesterday morning.  That seemed to help a lot with the nausea and diarrhea.  Of course, his energy level is still lower than he'd like it to be but he's actually at work today.  This is the first time in four sessions that he's been able to do that.  We had resigned ourselves to the fact that he was going to need to schedule chemo Thursdays off for the remaining weeks of his treatment.  Looks like that won't have to be the case.

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