Week in Review: Medical Stuff and a Nasty Bout of Food Poisoning

We had a pretty low-key weekend compared to the previous weekend when we flew in the Tri-Pacer.

Thanks to food poisoning, we stayed indoors most of the time, except for my solo excursion to Nay Aug Park on Saturday afternoon, and David managed an outing for a few hours yesterday.

Medically-speaking, last week was actually a continuation of the improvement trend. David is currently in a 14-day schedule of radiation to his neck, left shoulder, with spot treatment to his right hip. I'd say he's about two-thirds of his way through, except we lost track last week, when they kept changing the appointment times every day and cancelled Friday's treatment because The Machine broke down. So I don't know how precisely how many days he has left; he might be finished this round at the end of this week or early next week.

Chemotherapy is on Tuesdays, indefinitely.

They give David an anti-nausea drug (Neulasta) before the run of chemo, then a post-chemo white blood cell booster 24 hours after treatment, which he loathes because it makes him too sore to move. But, as with everything, he takes it, albeit with a wince or two. Or three.

As you can imagine, Tuesdays are dreaded days, what with radiation stacked on top of chemo. But David said he was feeling OK afterwards, good enough to attend the weekly Civil Air Patrol meeting in the evening. This is a breakthrough -- his first CAP meeting in months! In an uncharacteristically domestic moment I baked cookies and sent them along, it was like his first day back at school. I was so pleased.

David came home cookie-less and tired but awake, so we watched a Netflix DVD, "Kissing Jessica Stein". Suddenly a craving kicked in. Luckily our fridge/freezer is stocked in Pregnant Lady Fashion:

- sweet midget gherkins
- vanilla ice cream
- Boost (meal supplement), strawberry and chocolate
- Creamsicles
- Italian ice
- frozen macaroni and cheese
- Rogers Chocolate-covered ginger
- ginger ale
- Fresca (this is the newest craving)
- cranberry juice (3 different kinds)
- cheese sticks

Et cetera. But David's biggest craving of last week was frozen egg rolls. I offered to get him FRESH egg rolls, but he was hell-bent on getting frozen ones, and I couldn't find any at our local supermarket. But the previous Sunday he found "Cohen's Egg Rolls" at another grocery store. In his own words:

Dave's Logbook: Clarification

I should also clarify that I DO clean out the fridge of old items from time to time. David's a self-admitted packrat (see? another uncomplimentary rat reference), and I am forever throwing stuff of his away, especially hole-y socks and trinkets from romances gone... er, stale. But he won't let me touch the tin of yams in the pantry from the previous millennium, so it's a slippery slope. I forgot about the condiment container -- the one where packets of soy sauce find new ways to ferment next to mutating mustard. The condiment container is probably the culprit of David's food poisoning, combined with Jewish egg rolls. I tried one, but he ate the rest.

I didn't mention it until now because David's suffering has been insufferably embarrassing for him at times since last Tuesday. But he finally wrote about it, which is a temporary suspension of the Unwritten Spousal Nondisclosure Agreement of Bodily Dysfunction. Poor, poor guy. He's been occupying only the part of the second floor that houses the bathroom, the second bedroom, and the corridor in-between. I use the downstairs bathroom. Usually food poisoning lasts a day or two, and the common recovery method is "just ride it out", but having a compromised immune system means an extended sentence of gastro-intestinal conflict, with no chance of parole.

Amazingly, David managed to go to work for a couple of hours on Thursday AFTER radiation and a CT scan of his pelvis, while still in the throes of food poisoning. He's had some other internal problems, which probably shouldn't be mentioned here so David can still feel like a man under 40, at least on the Internet.

Tomorrow is Tuesday's Terrible Two-Fer again: back-to-back chemo + radiation. Wish him luck.