bendamron's Cancer Blog

December 19, 2007

FOLFOXy lady II Views: 42

yesterday was session two of angel’s treatment.
the day started with some fresh vegi juice and a bowl of cereal. angel’s nutritionist has put her on at least 45 grams of protein per day (on a vegi diet, this number is harder to achieve than it seems) to help fight fatigue during treatment. this number has been achieved with high grain cereals, soy products (michael’s fav tofurkey weiners have a whopping 26g!), banana flax almond cereal (10g) not including soy milk, almond butter, smoothies with teaspoon of flax oil and whey powder. her appetite is still a wee finicky, but eating hasn’t been too challenging.
we prepare for the day with packed snacks and a vegan sandwich for angel’s afternoon consumption. we get to virginia mason at 9 where angel and paige run off to the short stay room. i check in from time to time, but work mostly in the lobby where the wi-fi is kicking. work is manageable and feeling creatively productive.
angel is finished at 4, an hour overdue. the nurse was attempting to relieve angel’s hot flashes and her itchy throat. the nurse, who i find out later during the car ride home, was frantic and annoyingly talking to herself out loud, gave angel 50cc of benadryl, instead of the recommended 25cc for first timers. which made her feel tweaked and looped out. then angel became irritated with the nurse and most everything around her. on the way home, she commented on a grasshopper colored mustang and said, “what an ugly color, who would drive that thing?” and then made several snappy comments to one of my lame-o stories, but i’m happy to say that she only bit half of my head off once we arrived home to my repeated questions of, ‘do you want this, or that, or this?’. an hour later, paige reads that one of the side effects to one of the drugs in her treatment, you guessed it, irritability! supposedly lasting 10 hours. luckily for the remaining portion of my head, this side effect went away sooner than that.
i know not to take any of this personally.

to sum it up, her treatment went well as expected. her liver function numbers shot up dramatically which even surprise dr malpass. i heard this secondhand from paige, but dr malpass said something is working, the drugs, her diet. he wasn’t sure exactly from what, but it’s more important to see the trend rather than this number alone. i’m just happy that angel is putting up a good fight.

later that night i rented ‘mean girls’ and ‘hairspray’ for the girls to veg out to, i was in the other room enjoying a flick of my own, but i’m not sure how much of the movie the girls actually watched. paige is angel’s childhood friend, they pretty much know everything there is to know about each other, which gives me the perfect opportunity to pull the juicy stories out of paige }: my grandmother reads this so i’ll refrain, but if you really want to hear them, ask me offline ;)

tonight, i went to the pharmacy to pick up a new time release pain pill for angel, and while i was waiting for the order, i checked my blood pressure at one of those free stands. it read 125/91. the generic chart indicated the following: pre-hypertension/stage one hypertension. hmmm, my health insurance kicks in on the new year, perhaps a check up is due. although toni says i am normal, except for the 91 part. i should look into a new shrink since mine is on hiatus.

while i was at the pharmacy, toni was at our place whipping up a scrumptious bruchetta concoction of (it flipped my taste buds out, yum!) all chopped kimchee base mixed with ginger, cilantro, smoked salmon, peppercinis, roasted red pepper, gorgonzola, and tabasco sauce all on top of toasted french bread! she threw down, i threw down. angel had her staple of pintos bean, tortillas and homemade pico de gallo. i don’t think our food tempted her one bit.

angel has been meditating/sleeping for the past couple of hours, i think she’s due a pill of some sort, so i better go find out.

Posted on December 19, 2007 at 5:45:00 PM by angel & ben ( Link to this post.