Mouth sores

Once the crampy abdomen started resolving, the mouth sores came with a vengence.  It was so terrible he could hardly open his mouth.  It was another week of a liquid diet, smoothies and popsicles and oragel to help numb the mouth. 

The only good thing to come out of it was that on Monday after his routine blood work, we found out that he had reached his nadir.  He was at the lowest for his white blood cell count, below 500 (normal between 4-10,000).  This meant that the chemo was working... but also meant that his immune system was hanging on by a thread.  He wanted to continue to work and I was angry about it.  He could pick up any bug imaginable!  He promised me he would go to work and not attend meetings unless he could call in to the meeting.  By Thursday his blood count had gone up to a normal range and I could stop giving him the neupogen shots.  He had been having them for 8 days straight, but they did their work and elevated the white count.

On Thursday he called and said he ate a Big Mac for lunch!  I knew he was 'on the mend'!!  This weekend has been a good weekend, and he has felt pretty good, even doing projects around the house.

Next Friday begins a new round of chemo for him, round 4 of six.

We will enjoy these great days this week and hope that this next round won't make him too miserable and the worst is behind him.

Hungry?

For the past week Gary has not been able to eat solid foods without getting cramps and diarrhea, so he has soup and lots of Pedialyte.  We know it is from the increased dose of chemo he just completed last Tuesday, but it is still hard to see.  This is a guy who loves food and he doesn't even feel hungry.

He is weak, but he will not succumb to it and is constantly doing projects around the house when he is not at work.  Yes, he is working full time and I think, as does he, it is a great distraction.

We want to plan a trip after the chemo stops and hopefully we can make that happen.  First of all we don't know when it will stop.  We know he has 2 more courses of EPOCH-R and then it depends on the clinical trial whether he will not get anything or get Bortizamib twice a week.  The unknown is hard.

Round three

The chemo is finally effecting Gary.  It's not that it didn't before, he would feel a little weak, especially around day 9, but the new side effects are beginning at day one.  The bad taste in the mouth starts immediately and he assumes that is from the prednisone.  Our daughter made hard candies in different flavors, and that seems to be the only thing that helps.  He says that it immediately takes the bad taste away.

At day two the diarrhea hit and the nausea.

We are now at day three and he is still sleeping, so I have no idea what to expect. 

He will have to go in to the NIH for the chemo bag change today as he will for a total of 5 days.