A Short Clinical Update

This will be a short clinical update on my status and won't be linked on Facebook (unless I change my mind of course)  so...if you got here then you must be a "regular" visitor.

Clinical updates are seldom pretty as in a literary sense. We "fact" charted as nurses and it was to be kept short and concise and a description of what we saw with no input on our part of what we "thought".

The PO (by mouth) chemo that I take every morning and every evening continues. I have another 4 days of it and I'll be finished with my 14 day run. Seven days off and then start it again. This is to target the colon cancer.

I continue to take the Femera for the breast cancer. It stops the production of estrogen which feeds the tumor I have and hopefully it will continue to shrink. At some point I will go back into surgery for the mastectomy. I don't have a date on that yet.

Every 3 weeks I will have to go to the clinic to get an infusion of Olaxiplatin. This chemo also targets the colon cancer and is the protocol that will continue with the PO chemo for a year. The tumor removed from the colon was staged at a three but only because of it's size. Supposedly there was no lymph node involvement but nodes were removed from beside it for insurance against it spreading. There is no guarantees that it won't return but this is the best they can do. I have a double whammy on cancer and they are hitting me with a lot of chemo to combat both of them. I'm a bit unusual as I have two primaries.
I have moved from the sofa to an upright position. I'm walking around, driving around and moving around. The fight against depression is being won slowly. I have things I want to do and I don't want to spend the year "waiting to get through with treatment". I tire easily. I'm guessing it's the chemo drugs that I swallow twice a day at 3000 mg per day.

I can eat ice cream! Last night the husband asked if I wanted some ice cream. I have been consuming only room temperature drinks and ice cream was definitely NOT on my diet. The parotid glands would clench up if I put something in my mouth that was cold. The reaction I had at the clinic was initiated by cold. Not being able to breathe was enough to warn me off of anything cold. Apparently I am now far enough out from that chemo run that I can now enjoy something cold. The ice cream cone the husband handed me was awesome. The parotids didn't react, my breathing remained normal. My fingers don't tingle when I touch a cold can of soda which means I don't have to wear those leather gloves to get something out of the fridge. 
One  more note...the bowel movements (which are very important after a colon resect) are getting more regular. I eat a huge orange every morning for the fiber and haven't had to drink any prune juice to help things along. The only strange thing I note about this part of what I call "returning to normal functioning" is that about 10 minutes after I eat something, I feel nature's call and off to the bathroom I go. No diarrhea is noted.

Ok, so my little report veared away from just a "clinical notation" but it's my little blog and I can do that... (grinnin ). I'm done here.