Willie's cancer

Today begins the final round before surgery. This is his fourth. Round 3 was not great. They seem to progressively worse with a few more down days. In fact, Willie ended up in the ER back on the 16th (see prior post to this one). That was fun, NOT! Anyway he was supposed to get the catheter taken out 5 days later, but couldn’t get in to the urologist until 8/26. So that required an addditinal trip to the walk in clinic. After a bit of a fight, they removed the Foley catheter. He’s been fine since then. He met with the eurologist and seems all is well. They told him to double the dose of Flomax (that’s he been in since his kidney stone a few years ago) and come back in 6 weeks for a recheck. We did have fun this past week with trying to get Zarxio sent to us at home so we can do those 3 shots at home instead of coming in to the hospital each day after treatments. The Zarxio is the miracle drug that’ll boosts his white blood cell count after the chemo treatments. Anyway, there’s a proces...

I’m What a difference a day makes. Yesterday was a cluster start to finish. After the two and a half hour ER visit we just sat around all day and binge watched Sullivan’s Crossing on Netflix. Willie just felt awful all day long and couldn’t really do much of anything. Today, he woke up a whole new person. He felt good enough to get out and mow for a few hours and do a lot of other things around the house and yard. At 3pm, we drove over to Confluence to meet with nurse Dolly who gave him his 2nd shot of Zarxio this round. All the nurses are so wonderful, knowledgeable, caring, and kind. We really feel supported. Carry on with Round 3.

Last night was rough. Willie was up all night long and couldn’t urinate. He was running a low temp, not the urgent head to emergency 100.4, but 99.6 which is a lot for him and he felt hot all night. Plus he hadn’t been able to go pee since 3pm yesterday. We made the decision early to go to ER and we arrived around 8 am this morning. Luckily they got him right in, took a chest xray because he’s been having a cough for a couple days, and some blood 🩸 (couldn’t use the port since it was still connected to the pump with the Fluorouracil (5FU)). He wore a mask 😷 because you just never know what’s going around and in the ER on the advice of Erica Kostenko’s text. Thanks Erica! They did give him some fluids to be sure since he was light headed and not feeling great. The first blood test came back okay for no infection. But they took more blood to do more tests for viral and we should hear about that in a few days. They also inserted a Foley catheter to drain the bladder of 500 ml and he’ll ...

August 15, 11:30 am, round 3. Today’s nurse was Kendall. Round 3 finished at 3:45 pm and home we went with the “hummer” (pump). He’ll go back at 4 pm tomorrow for shot of Zarxio and get the pump removed from the port. Then again on Sunday and Monday at 4 pm he’ll get a shot of Zarxio (this helps to keep the WBC count up). His weight was down about 4 pounds from last time probably because nothing tastes good now. He says everything pretty much tastes like cardboard (not that he eats a lot of cardboard but you know). The effects of chemo are cumulative so I guess it will get worse before it gets better no doubt. We met with Dr Voshtina the oncologist prior to the chemo. She seemed pleased with his labs and all things were pretty much on track. Calcium a bit low. Not much else to report. The Zarxio worked to keep the white blood counts up and Neutropenia away. This is good. Next steps are that he’ll get Round 4 of chemo in two weeks. After that round he will wait 6 weeks to recover. Then ...

Actually sometimes there are bad days. Right now is one. Yesterday and today are not the best. Willie is tired, grumpy, and though he moves around a lot just doesn’t feel up to speed. He’s been out trying to smooth out the tree lines so he can replace the sprinkler lines we moved when they pulled the trees last week, but it’s dirty, dusty, and he can do about an hour without feeling dizzy, tired, mad, and just done the past couple days. He’s been taking Dolcolax (as needed), excederin, and some anti-nausea meds. That’s about it. After my last blog post last Thursday 7/31 (the day of second round) he shaved his head and sent me this pic while I was at lunch. It was a bit shocking to see. I’m getting used to the bald now. I’m sure glad he didn’t do his eyebrows!! But they will probably come out on their own. You can see by his face he wasn’t happy to do this! Anyway, I got him some lightweight head covers but he might save them for colder months. For now baseball caps 🧢 work jus...