October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009We've had quite a bit happen the last week. Lynn went in for round 2 of her chemotherapy on Monday. Up to that point, things were going pretty well, and there wasn't much exciting happening. Her appetite came back when her taste buds recovered, and she gained back some of the weight that she had lost earlier. Normally, losing weight is a good thing, but in this case, she had lost so much that it was somewhat alarming. Gaining it back was definitely something her doctors wanted to see. Her breathing is also much better. The coughing has almost completely disappeared, and she has much more endurance than this time a month ago.

I also was able to make a splash. After getting tired of Lynn having all the attention, I sulked a bit, and gave it some thought, then decided to go out and get a haircut...a really short one. Basically, I had all my hair cut off. Basically, I have had five o'clock shadow longer than my hair. I did not tell Lynn about this, so it was a big surprise. Carlee and Mac were also surprised. Heck, I was surprised every time I went past a mirror!

On Monday, she got in early for the chemo. They got started right away, which was something we wanted to see. Her goal was to get done in time for trick or treat on Thursday. Based on experiences from the last round, Dr. Blair had her receive a number of doses of Methyl Blue, six in all, throughout the chemo. That chemical, you may recall, binds with the byproduct of the Ifex that caused all the confusion and weird behavior she experienced last time. He also tweaked the dosages of her other chemo ingredients. The bottom line was, it all went extremely well. The Ifex did not mess with her at all, and everything else went off exactly as planned. In fact, Dr. Blair was able to increase the dosage on one of the drugs, since she was able to handle it, meaning that it will be more effective killing off the lymphoma cells. Bottom line was she got done ahead of schedule, and wrapped things up on Wednesdayevening. It was late enough in the day that she was unable to go home that night, but she got home Thursday morning, well ahead of trick or treating at 6PM.

One thing that was of some concern was that she has appeared to gain some of her weight because of fluid gain. Her heart doctor, Dr. Jordan, was pretty irritated that Lynn had not told him that she had gained as much weight as she did during the course of her recovery time, after the conclusion of the first chemo, and the beginning of the second round. To be fair, he had established a target number for Lynn, and she had not exceeded that value, so Lynn did think that she had to call. However, it was very close to that threshold, so Dr. Jordan had wanted to know anyway. He has adjusted her Lasik as a result, increasing it two-fold, and has instructed her to take it twice a day. That will mean that she will have to camp out a lot more around the bathroom after she takes each dose!

One other news item - Sharon Allen cut her hair for her when she was in the hospital. It has been falling out at a very quick rate now, so there was not much left to cut. In a couple of days, it will probably be all gone, and she will look just like me.

The next step will be a number of doctor visits, and we will be looking towards round 3 of the chemo. That is coming up in mid November. Another round will be in early December, followed by one during the week between Christmas and New Years. Lynn was able to take her laptop to the hospital and could actually get some work done. This is actually a good thing for her - there is only so much TV you can watch before you go crazy, and she likes to keep busy.