Wednesday/Thursday update

Wednesday morning started with a bit of dry heaving while sitting in the Radiation Therapy waiting room. (Robin carries around a "Glad" gallon size bag partly filled with kitty litter for these special occasions. Typically only a small amount comes out of her mouth even though her whole chest seems to heave.) The good news is that this activity instantly qualifies a patient to be whisked away to a private exam room until they stop! A holistic nurse (who is also an acupuncturist) met with Robin. The nurse rubbed Robin's wrists while having her close her eyes and picture her favorite place to relax (that's the backyard at home!). This procedure helped quite a bit!

Robin seemed to have a little more energy after the radiation was completed. They had strapped her onto the radiation table for about ten to fifteen minutes (hmmm...that's longer than we had expected!) while they applied the different radiation beams to the tumor. The mask which holds her face has a waffle pattern and she emerged from the treatment room the waffle pattern briefly imprinted on her nose and right cheek! The tumor seems larger now than when they originally made the mask (actually, since they made the mask the tumor shrunk during the second course of chemo and has since re-grown). The good news was that later in the day she had enough energy to go for a thirty-five minute walk on the walking path down by the river (of course stopping every five minutes to use the glad bag)!

Thursday she has had nausea most of the day. It's sometimes difficult to tell what is causing the nausea, the pain meds or the tumor itself. Before she even started the cancer treatments in early August she had nausea and vomiting everyday just from the tumor. The doctors here are great (Having a problem? Come right in!) and they are helping her try different pain meds and anti-nausea medications to find out which ones work best for her!

The ongoing treatments should now help shrink the tumor for good. We're looking forward to next Monday's chemo because we're figuring that we will never have to see it grow this big again! Hopefully by the end of next week the tumor will have shrunk and she'll be getting over the chemo side effects so she will be able to have a few days (or weeks!) of being energetic again. We do expect that she may eventually fatigue from the radiation treatments, but we're hoping those effects will be several weeks away!