We spent much of yesterday afternoon at the cancer center here in Topeka. Although we had good experiences at KU Med, I must say, said Ed Grimley, that now that we've been having many more visits and tests, it has been good to have the care that much closer.
Although this was the regularly scheduled three-month visit after CT scans, also on the agenda had been the problems of mobility and pain in my right leg (and now my left shoulder as well). But since the MRI scan had been postponed because the stent in my heart was incompatible with the open-sided MRI machine, that discussion was postponed. In the meantime, I'm taking time-released morphine twice a day to control the pain.
Added to the consult were the problems I've been having with diarrhea, nausea, and loss of appetite. I was worried about the CT scans, as it seemed to me that either there would be news to account for these symptoms, but in that case the news would be bad, or there wouldn't be any news, in which case we'd have to continue juggling all the variables that the disease and the multiple medications involve. The good news is that the CT scans were all normal; nothing had changed with the primary tumor, and there was no new growth of the tumors on my spine. The bad news had come earlier in the consult: that I had lost 17 pounds in the two or three weeks since my last weigh-in. Especially the last week, even the thought of food nauseated me. Even when food looks good, after a bite or two, I've been unable to continue--at the best.
One of the possibilities, of course, is that after five years I can no longer tolerate the level of chemo, but we had taken two weeks off and the symptoms had only gotten worse, so for the moment that has fallen to the bottom of the list. Another is that I have had gall stones for some time, and perhaps they have attached to and inflamed the lining of the gall bladder. Another is gastric ulcers. A long shot possibility--luckily--is that the cancer has metastasized to the brain, but there are no symptoms specific to brain cancer. In tracing the chronology of this, Mohamed brought up that it occurred at the same time I had a persistent cough, which had led to headaches, which had led to my giving up smoking but substituting vaping. Dr. Hashmi lit up with that one, since he feels that vaping is potentially as bad as smoking and that we have no ideas what chemicals are in the vaping liquid.
Originally, he was going to schedule an appointment with a surgeon specializing in gall bladder surgery, but he decided instead that I'll take two different anti-nausea medications regularly as opposed to as needed. I'll stay on the morphine until I've had the MRI (July 15th) and another consultation with Dr. Hashmi. I'll continue to take a combo of two anti-diarrheal meds. Add to all of these, the chemo, the anti-hypertension meds, and who can remember what else, and my innards are a veritable pharmacopeia.
After the consultation, I spent the next hour getting a saline IV to help ward off dehydration and exhaustion. I also got the bone-strengthening shot. While I was getting the drip, another patient sat down next to me and explained his cancer condition. And he listened while I explained mine. And then he said, "How has all this impacted your Christian faith." I replied--tactfully, I thought--that I'm not a Christian. This was incomprehensible to him. He had absolutely no response until I was getting up to leave. Then he asked me for my name so he could put me on his church's prayer list. I was tactful once more.
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