Side Effects

I have been surprised at how little I have had in the way of side effects from treatment so far. On the first round of chemo I only vomited one time and that was "not much" because Yoko was feeding me like a bird. I seem to get more tired more easily, but not sleepy. After the first treatment we went to Houston. I was tired and slept during the day, but I was not the exhausted tired I was kind of expecting. I seem to get feverish once in a while, but if I lay down and take a nap, I seem to recover pretty well. I do not sleep very well, I have noticed. I have always been able to sleep solid. Since the diagnosis I sleep for an hour or two and wake up; look at the clock and try and fall asleep again. I am not sure if this is the drugs or something psychological -- stress and worry. When I do sleep something always seems to wake me. Most nights it is heart burn or acid reflux. So much for late night beer! (June and I were in a London Pub Christmas of 2004.) Other nights it is Yoko....coming in after I am in bed and waking me up; last night it was a rash.

I had an allergic reaction to something and I broke out in an itchy rash. The rash was like a poison ivy rash in appearance; I showed it to Scott Lunin this morning and he brought in a colleague to look at it....he had the"I've never seen this before" look in his eyes. He and his associate agreed that the rash appeared to be a drug reaction; but it would be hard to know what drug. He tried to see if I had eaten something unusual or if Yoko was washing the cloths with a different detergent.... I told Scott I suspect that the reaction is a delayed reaction; that perhaps some of the drugs in chemo mask the reaction and wear out. His colleague thought it could be the Taxol. The rash developed over several days and only got bad last night. After today's chemo it has almost completely disappeared. In fact, there was a noticeable improvement WHILE chemo was being given today, so I suspect my theory is on track. The ONLY thing that I have had that is not usual for me is Boost. I suspect that the Boost could contain something to which I am allergic. Anyway, I had Chemo today, the rash is gone, and I have NOT taken Boost. I did take OTC Benedryl and Prescription Methyprednislone after chemo to take care of the rash, so I am not sure what is working. I am going to stay away from the Boost this week and try and eat normally....if my theory is correct, the rash might come back in a few days once the chemo cocktail starts wearing off.

It is 3 AM and I am up blogging because I can't sleep and had enough acid tonight to cause a violent vomiting episode. Of course I feel better afterward. Unfortunately the acid is keeping me up, so I am here blog blog blogging.

I ate a full meal tonight -- veal and spaghetti, salad, bread, apple pie and coffee for desert. Felt fine. During chemo I ate the bag lunch Yoko gave me; ham and cheese sandwich on rye, peanut butter cracker packaged snacks, melon in a bowl. When I got home from chemo she made me another sandwich -- some sort of open cheese thing and an orange. I had cheerios, melon, and an English muffin with jam, apple juice and tea for breakfast, before treatment. I felt fine all day and have had no trouble eating....so tonight's vomiting session is a set back. This is actually the first time I am pretty sure the vomiting was caused by chemo. I have suspected all along that as time goes on, I would see the cumulative effect of treatment and it is my understanding that the side effects generally start showing up after two or three treatments. I guess we will know in the next week or so. Hopefully this vomiting will be a one time event.

They say I have to maintain my weight and I am actually eating better than I did before diagnosis... I would say before all this began I weighed 155 stark naked. In fact, I was developing love handles and I thought I was getting too heavy in all the wrong places. So before I was diagnosed, I was frequently skipping breakfast and often even skipping lunch and just eating one full meal a day. I hindsight, I now realize that my "dieting" may have been a loss of appetite associated with the tumor. I am now making it a point to eat three meals (or more) a day. When I went for my annual physical, I weighed 149 with all my cloths on. (They weigh you these days with shoes on, so who knows what your actual weight is...it depends on whether you have beach sandals on that day or leather wingtips!) Anyway, my point is that this week I weighed in at 148 (fully clothed) and the radiation people began to lecture me about how important that I NOT loose weight! (Next week I am going with the sandals.) When I weigh myself at home in the nude after a shower I weigh about 141 or 142 on an admittedly less precise scale. On the same scale I use to weigh (before "dieting" about 152 - 155) so if you were to ask me how much weight I have lost in the last six months, I think the answer I would give is between 10 and 12 lbs -- that is about a 7% weight loss, or in other words, fully clothed I would have weighed about 160. My goal is to get back to maintain 150 fully clothed. Today I weighted 148.

I have not had to deal with many other side effects so far. They say the cisplatin will effect your kidneys, so I am drinking water and peeing frequently. I was starting to get some back pain, but that has gone away and so has my cough (mostly) so that is good news. I have not lost any more hair than when I started, so no one knows I am on chemo. I may skate by and not loose any more hair; we'll see. If I start loosing it on my head, no one will notice; if I loose my eyebrows, that is another story and I will have to thing about what do do. I do not want the world to know about this yet. It is a matter of time, I suppose. That is the subject for my next blog.