Radiation Done!

This last week on Tuesday was the final radiation treatment. A milestone has passed. Of course all the issues from radiation show up near the end and then continue to progress into the week. Tim has a really bad sunburn, his ear drum is irritated and he has a sore throat in addition to the taste issues. The skin around the incision is very fragile and so just a simple touch in the area causes the skin to break open. Hopefully the sunburn has peaked and the skin can begin to heal. I think he’s getting tired of having to have a continual application of Neosporin on the area. We also have a steroid and anti-biotic med for the eardrum and that has certainly helped there. His taste is slowly returning now and so he’s starting to eat again. He had lost almost all the weight he gained since August in these last three weeks. Living on cereal just doesn’t cut it.

Tim is also getting another two week break from chemo and doesn’t have to go into the clinic next week. The following week will be a triple whammy again of the three main chemo drugs. We’ll be back into the routine of triple whammies and vincristine on the other weeks. Cycle number 6 was done in the clinic with a short stay in the oncology ward at the end. He didn’t do as well with the nausea this time. I think at this point a lot of it is anxiety around going into the clinic for the chemo treatment. The good news here is that we’re now expecting 14 cycles of whammies rather than 16. So this means he may be done in May with mid June being the point that the doctors expect his blood counts to be back close to normal. And we’ll be half way done in a few weeks.

--bob