The “C” Word – Day 74 Update on oncology appointment

This morning we had our first oncology appointment since the surgery.  George has lost about 5 lbs. since we left the hospital (I deducted a few pounds for shoes since he did not wear them at the 7AM weigh in time at the hospital on the 15^th).  This is largely due to the fact that we are lucky if he eats 400 calories in a day due to the mouth sores.

We covered the questions we needed to ask the doctor and he subsequently ordered prescriptions for “magic mouthwash” containing lidocaine to ease the pain in George’s mouth and also has some antibiotic component I think.  He also order some meds to control what is viewed as herpes of the mouth.  Most of us may have a herpes bug running around in our bodies that remains inactive until something stresses the body out (i.e. surgery, chemo, etc) at which point it decides to rear its’ ugly head.  We hope that within a day or two that these will help ease the symptoms and within 4 or 5 days that it is nearly gone.  Keeping our fingers crossed.

We talked about the fact that this also could have been induced due to a vitamin deficiency given that whatever George does manage to drink has no nutritional value to it.  So he was told to take a multivitamin. 

Because some of George’s blood counts and other things are quite low, doctor ordered up to have 2 units of blood transfused tomorrow.  I called upon my Sara to see if she can drive him over there and get him situated allowing me time to spend with clients as Wednesdays are quite busy.  I will then go over mid-afternoon to check on him and pick him up.  Hopefully that will give him back some energy as well.  Once he starts being able to eat again I hope that his blood levels return to normal so we do not have to keep doing transfusions. 

Stitches are healing okay – even the ones that are somewhat “open” as they are clean drains at this point in time (thanks to advice from our neighbor about how to get them to stay that way). 

The only “down” side of the new meds is that they have to be taken 5 times a day at fairly equal times so I will need to wake George at 2AM to take one of them AND to drink a lot of water.  It is only for 5 days – so hopefully we will both be able to fall back quickly to sleep.  I am still sleeping on the airbed in the other bedroom as George is not able to sleep with his mouth closed since he cannot sleep on his side yet. . . and the CPAP air blowing out of his mouth can be quite annoying.  So I at least am getting decent sleep when given the chance.

Today was pretty non-productive at work since I did not even get in until nearly 11AM. My boss wanted to take me to lunch today so that was a nice long lunch break as well.  We both needed to reconnect as between my time out of the office which was on the heels of her being out of the office for a few weeks has meant that we have barely seen each other for well over a month.  It is so nice to work for understanding people who have become friends over the course of time.  Since we are a small business we all rely heavily on one another to run everything as smoothly as possible.  We are a great team of people.

Praying that between new mouth meds and medications to get rid of the virus, the transfusion, and good rest that things start proceeding forward at a better rate than they have been.  It would be nice for them all to come together so that George can feel human again and thus motivated to start moving around more and more.