Cancer Champion

Here’s another of all the meds she has to take in a week.  :-(

I am looking for volunteers to help me occasionally drive Christina to her radiation appointments.  She has appointments every weekday in the early afternoon.  Her family has been very helpful already and I wanted to know if anybody else can help out so I don’t have to only ask them all the time.

Just a warning, the drive is about 45 minutes one way, without traffic.

Let me know if you can help and I’ll coordinate with everybody.

Thanks!

Well, after 5 days of chemo and 3 days of radiation, she is feeling pretty tired. :no:

But, at least the headaches and nausea are mostly gone. I’m hoping she will get better rest now and have more energy.

She’s having headaches and nausea again.  Called the doctor and he said the radiation is causing swelling and is making the headaches worse.  He upped the dexamethazone (steroid) dosage again.  We keep trying to taper off of it, but once in a while we have to bump it up a bunch.

SOOOOO tired -_-

We finally have a clean house again.  Actually, it’s cleaning than it has ever been, thanks to the cleaning people from Crisp Cleaning.  They came in and did an initial cleaning, which they call semi-deep cleaning.  All the shelves and desks and furniture are dust free and there is no visible dog hair on the carpet!  All the dog hair tumble weeds are gone… for now.

And a big thank you to Tai Sifu and all the Sifus from White Dragon for helping us pay for this service!

:-)

Had the first day of chemo and radiation today.  She seems okay, just as much energy as before, but it’s only the first day.

She was a little week kneed about half hour after taking the chemo drug.  We’ll just have to be careful right around that time.  The physician assistant did say to make sure to have lots of water and a good breakfast since she can’t eat for 2 hours before and 1 hour after taking it.

Also, I want to send a big thank you to Alex, one of my best friends who is a post-doctorate at UCLA.  As soon as he found out about Christina’s condition, he helped me get in contact with the director of the neuro-oncology team at UCLA, who is going to take a look at Christina’s reports and MRI to give us a second opinion.  They may have access to more clinical trials there that can help.

Look at all the meds she has to take.  :-(

We went out to dinner and a movie with some friends last night.  We left around 6 and didn’t get back till 10pm, Christina’s energy level were good and didn’t complain about fatigue at all.

We went to a new restaurant called Burlap and to the fancy Cinepolis theater in Del Mar, it was a lot of fun.  Thank you to the Browns again for the invite! :laugh:

She will be going through six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.  The radiologist says the part that is being radiated will lose hair and we don’t know if it will grow back.  The nurse at the patient and family class said it wouldn’t grow back, but the radiologist said it would, so we are hoping it is the latter.

Either way, she will have a bald head for at least a couple of months and hopefully a stubbled head for a few more months after that.  This is why we are throwing Christina a “hat party,” where we get her hats and scarves to help her keep her head warm and wigs to give her some “hair.”  :cowboy:

Also, getting together with family and friends with lots of food is always nice!

Here’s a registry for head coverings.
http://www.headcovers.com/Show/199321/

Let me know if you didn’t get an invite.