Another week off

I arrived at the hospital with my usual bag of goodies – ipod, entertainment magazine, pasta salad, and bottle of juice. Got myself all settled into my chair and went through my latest litany of side effects – which was surprisingly short this week. The nurse checked my eyes (this time I was wearing my glasses as I have been for the past week) and immediately noticed they looked about the same as last week. I said they had gotten better over the week, but on Sunday they started getting worse again and by Monday night, there were new whiteheads and a few less lashes. I’ve done everything they suggested – hot compresses to ease the pain and redness, eye scrubs with baby shampoo, antibiotic eye drops, and every night a light coating of the antibiotic ointment that I use on the rest of the rash. None of it seems to have much of an effect. So, they checked in with Dr. Lange and he decided to hold off treatment for another week.

Even though they don’t really look bad, I suspect that nobody wants to play around with an area as sensitive as my eyes. As I said before, they have not seen anyone else experience this side from the Erbitux so as per usual with me, we are forging a new frontier. I finally gave in and am wearing my glasses every day and went out and got prescription sunglasses too (though I am grateful for Lenscrafters’ 30 day return policy – which I have used once and may again depending on the general consensus about pair number 2). The eyes don’t hurt as much as they did, probably because I’m not forcing small pieces of plastic into them each day, but they are itchy and irritated. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions for taking care of them.

The Sandostatin seems to still be working, though I have reached a plateau. I’m satisfied, for now, with keeping my bathroom visits down to 7-8 per day, but we all think we can get it lower. So I’m staying on the Sandostatin for another few weeks at a higher dose. Pat isn’t thrilled, though he did get a lesson on giving the injections once again. Now we think the reason I keep bruising is because of the amount of drug being injected – it takes a good 30 seconds or more for the whole in syringe to be emptied sub-cutaneously and it may just be too much. One option we are looking at is breaking up each injection into 2 smaller injections, the other is to use my belly for a lot more of the shots. We’ll start with the belly and go from there. I’ve got a nice collection of black and blues, but I’m using a whole lot less Charmin – a worthwhile tradeoff in my book.

We had a lovely weekend in the Berkshires, seeing and staying on the NY side for the first time. We really loved it and found that houses on that side of the border are a whole lot cheaper than ones on the Massachusetts side. Hmmm….