March 18, 2024
4 weeks down. 2 weeks to go.
Another Monday another start of a week of radiation. We saw Dr. Wa today. David told him he didn’t feel very well this past weekend. He was also experiencing a good bit of pain this morning and was restless and uncomfortable riding to radiation. Dr. Wa said he had not yet studied the scan from Friday but as he was just glancing at the scan, he would estimate the tumor has reduced in size a bit. He said some cases show more of a shrinkage by this stage of treatment and this wasn’t a surprise to us considering David is still having enough pain to have made us question if this was working at all. Dr. Wa also said we wouldn’t really know the full effect of the radiation until after treatment was complete. He said this was also a reason why any surgery (should that be a plan) usually came 4-8 weeks following treatment. We would have preferred to have heard “wow it is already significantly diminished” but David and I will take some shrinkage over no shrinkage. We knew what we were up against going into this when the chemo stopped being as effective as we wanted. David was still restless on the way home, but he did manage to drift off and nap most of the way back. He was a little nauseated after waking up, but it subsided after we got home. He sat outside on the patio reading for as long as he could stand the pollen collecting on every surface. I can tell he feels a bit worse than usual today, but he enjoys sitting outside in the sun. He is eating although he does not have much of an appetite and it is hard to push the fluids when he can’t stay awake. He still manages to drink more water than I do.
