A Rough Week

DeBary, FL.

80 deg. mostly cloudy, E. wind @ 2 mph.

Forecast = Cloudy early with scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 87F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.



Yeah!!! I know!!!! It's been over a week since I've last posted, but I wanted to find out what happened at Jim's doctor visit yesterday before I did.

If you remember, Jim was scheduled to get a larger dose of the Chemo treatment on Friday the 18th than he had been receiving in the past. Well, that went off without a hitch, but he did have to go through 5 hours of treatment instead of the normal 3 hours.

Saturday, Jim was feeling fine and Dave and Dee Dee, (the part of the "Illinois bunch" that wintered over by Tampa), stopped by for a couple hours. They were visiting some friends in Orange City and were able to swing by here for a visit. It sure was good of them to come as we hadn't seen them since last fall, up in Rantoul. From here they were heading over to Ocala to see someone else and then heading home to Illinois for the summer.

Sunday Jim was still feeling pretty well, although he was starting to get some bone/muscle aches from the heavier dose of Chemo. He was pretty much able to control it with normal pain meds though.

Monday, Laura took Linda over to an appointment with Dr. Molpus, the doctor who did Linda's surgery at the Halifax Hospital in Daytona Beach a few years ago. Linda was real worried as one of the tests that she had when we returned here last fall came back "abnormal"!!! Everything turned out OK though and a further test and an examination confirmed that there was no cancer present!!!!!!!

Yaaaaay!!!!!

Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" Jim was dealing with some severe bone/muscle pain throughout his whole body, that even the pain meds that had been prescribed by the doctor would not help much. He was also experiencing very heavy fatigue which made it very difficult to even walk from one end of the house to the other. This pain and fatigue was to last all the way to Wednesday when the pain subsided some but the fatigue persisted.

Then, Wednesday night nausea set in and he battled that until well into Thursday. Being that he was feeling lousy, he didn't eat or drink much, so by the time he and Linda went in to see Dr. Saferali  on Friday for a follow-up appointment, he had lost a bunch of weight and was dehydrated!! :-(  Dr. Saferali strongly suggested he stay for awhile and get an infusion for the dehydration, so that's what he did while Linda waited in the waiting room.

Jim's white cell blood count had also fallen quite low, so he received an injection to help that and was given instructions not to be around too many people for the next week so as not to get any kind of infection or virus as his immune system would not be able to fight the off and he could get very sick.

 Of course, this Sunday is Easter Sunday and Jim and Linda have been invited over to Marv and Inez's house for an Easter Dinner, but being that their small home will be packed with family, it's been decided that because of Jim's low white cell blood count, it would be better to be more "safe than sorry" and just have something here at home. :-(

So,  ,  ,  ,  ,  that pretty much brings us up-to-date. Jim seems to be feeling better right now, (Saturday afternoon),  with less fatigue and not as much pain, but that injection he received for his blood count may cause more bone/muscle pain in the next few days. We'll just have to see what happens.

His next appointment is this coming Friday, where they'll do another blood test and see how he's doing. Then if everything is going well, the week after that, (April 8th), he'll get another large Chemo dose which should be the last one of the series. After that, he'll have another PET Scan to check for cancer and then it'll be a matter of trying to recover from all the chemo and radiation treatments, which could take months.

A Quote to Ponder :  “When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'”
Sydney Harris

Woof!!!