Week 5 - Tumors are shrinking, and now Greg is too!

Welcome to Week 5 of treatment!

I am soooo glad to see the back of Week 4, a chemotherapy week. The drug, Cisplatin, certainly smashed me for six for a week. This morning, I woke up and it's like a fog has been lifted. I started Week 4 at 78Kg and I start Week 5 at 75Kg.

Today starts with a radiotherapy session in the morning, and then a catchup with June.

So the good news is that the tumors are shrinking quite nicely. June inspects my mouth and throat, feels around my neck, makes me jump on the scales and her prognosis is that I am doing very well, except she is concerned about my weight loss. I keep track of my weight each day, and you can see in the graph below my weight starts falling off a cliff a day or two after Chemotherapy at the start of Week 4.


This is caused by a few factors. As well as keeping my body running, I require additional energy for all the work my body is doing to fight the cancer. My body normally uses about 8,000Kj but they estimate it is now needing in excess of 10,000Kj. Chemotherapy makes me feel like crap, so I don't want to eat. In addition, the radiotherapy has side effects that make my throat feel like I have swallowed a few razor blades, so once again, I don't want to eat. On top of this, I have no sense of taste and no sense of smell. I don't want to eat, even though my brain says I must. I'm now on liquid morphine to help with the throat but the sad fact is, I am expending more energy than I am putting in, hence the weight loss. Sadly, the weight loss comes from muscle, not fat, so this means not only am I losing weight, but I am losing muscle mass rapidly.

I have to eat more, or will move rapidly to a feeding tube. Let's see what I can do as I exit the fog of chemo this week. Got to eat!!



Popular posts from this blog

Home again!!

Image
After nearly 4 weeks in hospital, it's time to go home! As one nurse quipped to me, "Hospital is where sick people go. Home is where sick people go to get better".  To those who visited, or helped Claire keep everything running at home while she juggled starting a new job and looking after pets and kids; thank you. It's so good to be home amongst familiar surroundings. As an added bonus, Formula 1 testing was on last night so it was great to put my feet up and watch F1 on the big screen :)
Read more

Week 8 - I'd rather forget it. Hallucinations and more.

Image
Week 8 since treatment started, and the first week with no treatment, is a week in my life I'd really rather forget. It turns out I developed Aspirated Pneumonia and Week 8 I was running a fever over 40 degrees, while dealing with the after effects of chemotherapy AND radiotherapy. In addition, I was on morphine injections and cocaine mouthwash for pain, and was sweating and hallucinating, whilst in a 4-bed room in a public hospital ward. The burns on my neck from radiotherapy were at there peak, so imagine what the burns were like on the inside of my neck! In addition, chemotherapy was smashing me for six. Seriously, I cannot imagine a worse week ever in my life. Claire battled with a SNAFU to get me transferred across to St. Vincent's Private Hospital and by Thursday evening I was transferred across to the private hospital. If you are reading this and don't have private health insurance; get it.  I don't have much of a recollection of this week other than frightening ...
Read more

Tumor shrinking, Greg not shrinking :)

Image
At my weekly meeting with my radiation oncologist, June, on Tuesday, she was on the lookout for tumor size in my neck and what they were up to. I have been able to noticeably see and feel the tumors reducing in size, and to quote her "tumor is shrinking, Greg's not shrinking, this is good". My weight is still holding stead (omg I am eating like a horse!) and the tumors are indeed shrinking; great news! This week is also when June walked through my upcoming chemotherapy and pain medication to allow me to continue eating as long as possible. I've been prescribed a solution to gargle, swish and swallow before eating to totally numb my throat for 15 minutes or so. This is to enable me to get food into me "normally" for as long as possible. The other drug is a type of liquid morphine derivative that I squirt into my mouth, swish around, then swallow. I'm to use this when panadol will no longer keep the pain at bay. Other than this, it's radiation therapy ...
Read more