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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