8th Round and Lingual Tonsillitis

Whew, this 8th round was a bear. I didn't have a lot of nausea but was very fatigued. I'm still not recovered but I'm trying to rally.

I did manage to avoid most of a rising episode of Hand-Foot Syndrome. After the 4th round I had a pretty harsh case of this. It's cumulative in nature, so this being the 4th round of this cycle of four treatments, I could feel the effects coming on. As soon as that happened I clutched ice packs for three or four days to try to prevent it, and I was successful. To learn more about this condition, this is a good website: Hand-Foot Syndrome

On top of the chemo and the recovery from that, my throat has been bothering me for over a week now. Usually the week after each infusion. my throat gets sore and raspy. It usually clears up by the next round. However, after round 7 my throat kept getting more painful every day. Finally I got squeezed in to see our ENT doctor. He told me I have lingual tonsillitis. I didn't know that we have tonsils at the base of the tongue, out of sight. Anyway, they are infected. He took a culture, prescribed some antibiotics, and told me to gargle with salt water pretty much continuously. He should have the culture result on Monday (tomorrow) and will adjust the antibiotic if needed.

So far today I feel no improvement, I'm still eating soft foods. I've lost a few pounds. I can't wait until I can eat pizza again.

On the upside, I don't know when round 9 will be. I will get to take a break and let some nagging issues heal (sore gums, nose bleeds, etc) while I get a couple of scans. We will then decide what weapon to use next. If there's just one lesion, I expect to be CyberKnifing it. If there are a bunch of small ones I expect to do radio-embolization. Whatever we decide to do, I'll post it here and explain it in further detail at that time. At this moment I still don't have the scans on the schedule. I suspect the oncologist is in a boxing ring with the insurance company. Once he prevails with authorization for the scans I'll get a call to schedule them.

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7th Round Finished and Catalina Island

Hello all,

It's been three weeks since I posted because I took an extra week off between treatments. We spent a nice long weekend on Catalina Island and the doc allowed me to push the 7th round off a week so that I'd be sure to have plenty of energy. And I did!

Here are a few pictures:

This cute little guy joined us for the weekend

David and me enjoying a nice dinner with a great view.

Sea Lions

David and me on a bus tour.

Catalina Bison

This is Pimu. She and the other Bald Eagles were the reason for the trip.

Meet "Echo", otherwise known as K-38.

Echo (K-38) is a recent Bald Eagle fledgeling. Many people came just to see her.

Those last two pictures were taken though a spotting scope using my regular camera. Not too bad considering how far away we were.

Now, onto the reason for this blog. Well, one reason for filling this post with pictures of our trip is because it's just more interesting. This round was a lot like the last one. The doc didn't have anything more to say. The plan is still to do one more round, then do TWO scans (a CT scan and a PET scan) in order to get the most information. Then we will decide what to do next. Do we CyberKnife? Do we do another embolization but with radioactive beads rather than chemotherapy-saturated beads? Do we approach a liver transplant surgeon for an opinion? The scans will determine the path.

My CEA this last time was 7.1. The time before it was 6.9. So, it's about the same. I would like to have seen a downward budge, but I'm certain that if we take more aggressive measures (one of the three in the last paragraph) it will plummet.

I'll keep you guys posted. In the meantime, I'll post more Catalina Island pictures on Facebook once we have a chance to go through them.