Yesterday was the last day of radiation! She is very happy that it is over. :yes:
Her spirits and energy is high and doing pretty good, walking the dogs, and the Sifus would be happy to know, she is doing eight pieces of brocade. :-)
Last week of radiation! It’s almost done! :D
Christina is doing much better, by the way, she is walking the dogs and heating food up some times. She does get waves of energy and fatigue though.
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.
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.
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.
Title: Radiation Treatment
Location: Radiation Oncology PET/CT building
Description:Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center (La Jolla)
Radiation Oncology PET/CT building
Start Time: 13:00
Date: 2011-09-22
End Time: 13:15
We had a somewhat long day at the doctors yesterday, follow up with the neuro-oncologist at 3pm, blood draw and pharmacy right after that, then we were late to the 4 o’clock appointment for a CT scan simulation.
The news is that the clinical trial she was qualified for is now closed due to funding and low success rate. So, now it is back to just the standard treatment of radiation and chemotherapy. They (the doctors) have a lot of confidence in the standard treatments, so that’s a positive.