March 11, 2024
Week 4 of radiation and it is Monday again, so we saw Dr. Wa after treatment for a weekly check-in. We discussed David’s pain level and the upcoming in office cone down scan for the radiation boost he will have during week six. Sometimes, a patient that meets certain criteria (age, margin status, and cancer grade) will receive an extra dose of radiation after the regular therapy is complete. This is called a boost or “cone down”. We talked about this before radiation began and have already agreed to the additional week of treatment based on Dr. Wa recommendations. I asked Dr. Wa if he could tell if we were making progress with the treatments and he said the scan on Friday will give him a better idea of where we are so we should be able to discuss that next Monday. He spoke about us possibly meeting with our colon surgeon as treatment is wrapping up in order to see what our options are. There will be more scans to get a better idea of what we are dealing with once treatment is complete. Our hope is to see very little if any tumor left.
The radiation fatigue is pretty constant for David. Fatigue felt during radiation treatment is different from the tiredness we feel from everyday life, and it usually does not get better with rest. It can last a long time and can get in the way of daily activities. It will usually go away with time after treatment ends. He gets nauseated around the same time every evening 6:30-7:00pm. So much so, you could set a watch by it. We usually try to eat dinner early and then we basically go through the same thing each night. Eat, relax, bathroom, pain and nausea. He can usually knock out the nausea with his anti-nausea meds, but the pain always gets worse before the any medication has a chance to kick in even when he tries to get in front of it. By the time it eases up enough for him to relax a little, he can then usually can start to think about falling asleep only for us to start it all over again in a few hours’ time. David has weekends off from treatment and oral chemo (capecitabine), but these two days seem to be worse on him than the days we go to treatment. We don’t fully understand why that is. The pain and side effects he has experienced with radiation have been the same since we started this journey, so it is difficult to know if the pain he has now is from radiation or still from the tumor. It keeps us in a constant questioning state. Incidentally, I have started on another Big Panda Tiny Dragon book and David picked up the one I just finished. After reading some pages he said so…I’m Big Panda and you are Tiny Dragon huh? And size has nothing to do with it 🙂 I love these characters and the profound and relatable lessons they are teaching me each day while I wait for him during treatment.
