Month: September 2024

As October begins, my wife is struggling to eat. Most of her nutrition is via a plastic soda straw. She also has severe burns from the radiation treatment. These burns cover an area between her shoulders and from her neck to her arm pits. Her skin in this area varies between being brown or black (dark in color). Near her right collar bone are two large sores about the size of silver dollars. She is using a pill crushing device to pulverize her medicine because it hurts too much to swallow any capsules. She also has been given liquid versions of some other things she needs to take. Nasea is her constant companion.

She is in good spirits as always, however; this past week she did not experience the rebound that had been the case between weeks of chemotherapy. This week will be yet another round of treatment.

Meanwhile, the meeting with the radiologist last week promised some degree of relief in the future. Hope that’s the case.

Lots of waiting in my immediate future.

Note: My second post for August was never completed so here’s the update covering the last few weeks.

This week my wife completed her 25 radiation treatments. She was told that there will be two more chemo treatments in October. This is in addition to the previously scheduled five that she has had. Chemo weeks are full of nausea, vomiting, dry heaves, lack of sleep and of course breathing difficulty.

The results of the treatment thus far is that she is on essentially a liquid diet. Nope, ice cream is not on the menu. A known side effect of her chemo is that she is hypersensitive to cold. Everything must be at room temperature or slightly warmer. Many foods don’t taste the same.

She has lost close to thirty pounds thus far, even though she is trying to eat high calorie foods.

Yesterday for example, it took about five minutes to successfully swallow a pill that was about the size of 1/4^th of an M & M candy.

I have lost count of the number of medical people recommending that she get a feeding tube. She is not interested.

The radiation doc has said that in a few weeks, her esophagus will begin to work better.

Mid to late November she will have another set of scans to see what impact her treatment has had on the cancer.

It has been a blessing to have my father-in-law here for the last several weeks. Sadly, this is not his first rodeo with seeing a loved one slowly fade away.

My parents popped in one weekend and their visit was probably the best one we’ve had with them in our twenty plus years of marriage. Miracles do come from such tragedy.

Our church here has been very supportive as have others in the community.

On days when her dad drives her for treatment, I am expected to continue working on the house. I have been painting, installing flooring, door and window trim, and other things as needed. The craft room is up and running and I also have a shiny new desk upstairs for computer work. Soon my toolbox will be delivered and then I can get my stuff in the garage organized.