Blog Date 10/07/2015

Ok, it is official, Sarah and I are here for the better part of the winter. My guess is I will have chemo with the last session the day before Christmas. We are ok with that and if all goes well we hope to go to Mardi gras the first part of February. I would like to go over to Texas on the way home but we will have to see how it goes.

I haven’t had too many difficulties with this chemo, the usual, but with this one I get some sort of prednisone which is used to enhance the chemo, that is my understanding, and it has a side effect of not letting you sleep a lot at one time. So I am getting used to being up early and napping, sometimes, in the afternoon. I’ll adjust to the schedule, actually I get a lot done in the early morning.

I did make a startling discovery today, in fact while eating lunch. Somehow my mouth moved over night. Now I have had a problem lately of getting my food in my mouth and I didn’t think much of it, but today the problem became more noticeable. Now I look in the mirror and the mouth is in the same place, at least it looks like it, but it isn’t there when I go to put food in it. I may be on to a medical phenomenon but we’ll have to do some more study on the subject. Again this time a lot of the different foods don’t taste good or have no taste at all, I thought it would take longer to get to this point, but it is already having an effect on me. The one item which tasted good the last round of chemo and does this time also are the bags of noodles, they are a dollar at most stores, quick to fix and they are very satisfying.

I have been doing a bit of reading lately. One book is about a cat and a murder, I know you may ask what am I doing reading a book about a cat, actually it is a five book series and I am trying to keep up with Sarah and besides my aunt says I need to try to understand cats better.

I have a WWII book, a Bishop Sheen book of quotes, and God Never Blinks, a group of stories a lady put together, not real sure what they are yet but will find out in the next few days. I have plenty of books to read which is good because there isn’t anything on TV at two in the morning.

I saw today where the new Microsoft windows phone may be out in December, I want one, and Sarah says I don’t need one but we’ll see. I use Windows 10 on my pc and I like it so it should be good.

I bought a Wii U so the grand kids could have something to do when they come over. Ok, I bought it because I wanted the newer cool race games. So here I am using the old bar type controller and I think there has to be a better one, something like what I see everyone using when playing Xbox etc. So I go out to Amazon and what to my surprise I find what I am looking for, so I order it. I get an email saying it will be here Oct 3, I wait and I wait, no controller but I look up the tracking and it is out for delivery by 8 pm Oct 3. It is finally delivered Oct 5, ok at least I have it. I open it and I have never used one of these before so I really don’t know what all the buttons do. I get the pamphlet out to see if I can learn to use this thing and it is in Japanese. Now I spent a couple of weeks in Japan, eons ago but not enough to read this thing. Trial and error will be my teacher or I suppose I could invite the kids over and they could teach me to use it.

I need to stay away from people for the next few days, they say the immune system gets quite low, it did this before and I didn’t have any problem so I plan on following the same routine and I should be fine.

Until later I wish you all God’s Blessings.

Update 10/1/2015

Yesterday I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. Now I don’t like going to the dentist and I don’t like getting my teeth clean, but now it is a necessity of life for me. So I get to the office and check in. The VA have kiosk where you check in and it gives you a printed receipt for the visit, on mine it said STUDENT. Now I know I am no longer a student, except of life, so I decided my dental person was a student. I ask, she said she was and I figured my life was over.

We get to the torture room, I mean, yeah torture room, and I proceed to tell her how much I do not tolerate dental pain. I told her since she was the only dental person in the room, she get hit if I have any pain.

So she says she will numb the area and sticks a cue tip in the back of my mouth. I forget to tell you, I am having a deep cleaning on the lower right quarter and IT IS BEING DONE BY A STUDENT, there is an instructor who checks the work and is there for questions. Anyway this young lady thinks she is going to fool me by hiding the syringe with Novocain in it behind her back until the last minute but I saw it and it wasn’t pretty. She actually did a pretty good job of giving the shot. It did deadened most of the teeth she worked on, didn’t quite make it all the way to the front but I didn’t hit anyone.

Today I had my first chemo of this go around. I take a Dexamethasone pill, four actually, the day before, the day of and the day after chemo. These are a steroid to keep the feet from swollen. Well let me tell you they may keep my feet from swelling but you are wide awake because they won’t let you sleep. I told the nurse that this morning at chemo and she said it would be that way for the three nights I take the pills. I probably won’t wake up until Tuesday when I go to sleep Sunday night.

Chemo went well, no nausea yet but we’ll see. We were there about two and a half hours, not bad. I did get breakfast, cheese omelet, hash browns and bacon but not toast, don’t know what happened there.

Bit chilly here, 46 when we woke up, high of 61 or so, I guess fall is here.

Not much else is going on as you can see. Most anything I do now for the next month or so will all be medical and I doubt many of you want to hear about those exploits so I probably not write anything for a while unless it is out of the ordinary.