5th Erbitux Treatment

After another tough week, Karen's starting to feel better. She had chemo on the 28th and normally is feeling a little better by the following Sunday. This time the nausea, tiredness and crappy feelings hung around all week. She's been having massive cramping and gas among other problems. On the 6th she had her 5th Erbitux treatment. This has been tolerable but caused a huge rash and lots of related problems. The pain in her side was written off to just things settling down. Her liver function is normal and it is not enlarged by any means.

To cap things off, she ended up in hospital yesterday unexpectedly due to de-hydration. A few hours hooked to an IV solved that.

Surely all this indicates the drugs are working and we can expect great scans in another 8 weeks?

Since she's on CPT-11, her hair has given up the ghost and is falling out in determined fashion. I don't think even with her thick mane we can avoid shaving this time around, although Karen's full of surprises.

Despite paying our life insurance last Jan, they called this week and said we were late by over a month and that a LAPSE notice had been placed on our policy. What a bunch of balony! Of course our payments are well documented so they had to admit the inaccuracy.

In other financial related news, Karen has already met and exceeded our yearly out of pocket maximum yet our medical insurance continues to bill us. I need to call them.

You know what though? Life goes on, we are full of resolve, our marriage is as strong as ever, the kids are a tremendous joy to us and we're going to the circus as a family on Thursday. So screw cancer.

Tumor Fever

Karen's doing well. She still has a fever on and off of about 99.5F with bouts of feeling crappy but it is manageable. I was worried Karen had developed a "super bug" of some kind which wasn't responding to the antibiotics. Indeed Karen herself was feeling very discouraged.

However, Dr Moriarty called her in for a consultation this evening and gave her an exam. The blood work from the weekend came back clear, meaning no infection. They are repeating that to confirm the result.

He also relayed that the entire team had reviewed her case this morning and everyone is pleased with the results (the shrinkage). What Moriarty suspects is Karen has a "Tumor Fever". This is not uncommon and is caused when the tumors "become necrotic" (die). You end up with dead tissue in your liver & colon which can cause inflammation and God knows what.

Naproxin (an anti-inflammatory) has been added to the treasure chest of drugs at the Shanahan household.

So after a worrying few days, we are taking this fever as a good thing. We continue to be impressed by the attentiveness, expertise and level of care provided by Dr. Moriarty and the team at Overlook.

Tough Questions and More Side Effects

Although this 2nd round of chemo was better overall, it seems there is no end to the side effects. Most recently Karen's hair has started to thin out, detected by the rather sizable hair-ball in the drain this morning. Luckily her hair is thick to begin with so perhaps this won't be that noticeable.

The sweating has abated and nausea returned over Friday and the weekend. New anti-nausea meds were prescribed to augment the current stuff.

This morning Karen's feet were sore with what she described as a feeling of severe blisters on the balls of her feet. It seems to have worn off as the day has worn on.

Also Sydney has become quite "clingy", waking up each night at 2am this past week, something she rarely does. Yesterday she told me she was worried about Mommy and asked if she was going to "disappear". I think all the coming and going has been hard on her nerves and we resolved to do a better job of making sure she knows when mommy will "go to work".