Starting Over

The good news was my eyes cleared up enough to allow me to have my treatment on Tuesday. The bad news is they have decided to restart the counter at 1 for this round. So instead of having 6 treatments remaining until my next break, I have 7. We are still hammering out the details, but it looks like I will have my next CT scan and appointment with Dr. Lange at the end of September instead of the beginning. This doesn’t really change anything, just makes it a little more challenging to make future plans.

I intend to talk with Dr. Lange about possibly changing my treatment schedule. Since it seems I am unable to get through 8 weeks uninterrupted and since we are not following any protocol, perhaps I can switch to 4 weeks on, 1 week off. This might decrease the number of times we need to stop treatment, but only having one week off might not be enough for me to ever get completely over the side effects. It’s just something we’ve been thinking about.

The first dose went smoothly – no side effects yet to speak of. I was even able to tolerate food and drink on Wednesday. I figured that after round 1 I had the rash on my face; round 2 it was on my chest and back; round 3 – still my back and the cracks on my feet; and this last one was the rash on my eyes. I’m taking bets on what the next side effect will be or where the rash will appear next. My eyes are mostly healed, though the eyelashes and brows continue to fall out. I finally got sunglasses that I like so I’m being good and still not wearing my contacts – a 20 year habit that’s hard to break.

We had a nice semi-relaxing weekend – spent lots of time outside. I discovered that I’m still lacking in upper body strength and which greatly affects my ability to water ski (not!) and stay on a tube. Perhaps this will be my impetuous to go back to the gym.

That’s all for now!