| 7:00AM Sunday September 30th ( 1 of 10 ) - Her throat is starting to become very sore. She is still not talking or eating. (although she did have two bites of jello last night) The mucus that is draining into her throat is making her nauseous, but nothing comes up other than the mucus. She keeps an icepack on her throat most of the time now. - Nita took her to the urgent care yesterday for fluids, but the doctor told her that she was not dehydrated, just in pain from the side effects. (He was more sympathetic than that, I am paraphrasing here.) - Only four more radiations to go! 8:00 PM Thursday September 27th ( 2 of 10 ) -Kara is still doing well after the chemo. Her throat is starting to get very sore. She is not talking or eating much. The phlegm is really bothering her, and she is using the mouthwash quite a bit. She is not getting too nauseus so we are keeping a constant slow flow on the feeding tube to make sure that the mucus is not the only thing in her stomach. She is tired and weak, but the mucus is what is really bothering her now. 7:00 AM Thursday September 27 ( 2 of 10 ) - Kara has been doing very well following the final chemo treatment. She looked great on yesterday and was released from the hospital in the afternoon. She still feels very weak - "like a noodle," she says, but has little to no nausea. Her throat is starting to get very raw from the radiation so she is not eating much orally these days, but she is using the feeding tube quite consistently. - Since she has been home from the hospital, some of the pain has picked back up. The nausea has too, but she is not throwing up. Her biggest discomfort is the "tar mucus" caused by the radiation. She has a special mouth wash to break it up which she carries around with her everywhere and spits it back into a little cup. This happens 10-15 times each hour. 8:00 PM Monday September 24th ( 2.5 of 10 ) - Kara is doing well relative to the situation. She looks completely wiped out, but she does not seem to be in any pain. She had radiation this morning, and took chemo in her hospital room from 11 until 6. She was doing very well throughout the chemo. She even worked for the majority of the day. It was not until 6 or 7 that the side effects kicked in. She is currently resting, but not sleeping. She seems to be doing much better than her last chemo, possibly because she has been on constant fluids since yesterday morning. She is not really talking or moving, but still better than yesterday morning. 9:00 AM Sunday September 23rd ( 1 of 10 ) - Kara decided not to wait through the night, and at 5 this morning decided that she needed to go in to the ER. Luckily, the doctors there took her immediately. She is already on her second bag of fluids. 11:00 AM - ( 3 of 10 ) Folbe admitted Kara in to the hospital today since he was going to do it tomorrow anyway. Her CAT scan and blood work from the ER came back clean. She got fluids and pain medication, and since most of her latest symptoms were from dehydration, she is now feeling better. 7:00 PM - (4.5 of 10 ) A room became available at 330 this afternoon. Kara is now settled into her room, and feeling much better. (so much so that she asked for her computer, and plans on working for the next few hours.) She is still getting fluids in preparation for tomorrow. The doctor at the ER has said that the reason she passed out in the bathroom this morning was due to the dehydration. 8:30 PM Saturday September 22nd ( 2 of 10 ) - The pain from the shots has mostly subsided, but Kara seems to have caught Sullivan's cold. Because of the treatment, all the symptoms are greatly amplified. She seems absolutely miserable. Her nausea has returned, and she has muscle aches all over. Her biggest complaints are dehydration and hunger, but she has been unable to keep anything down for the last three days. We briefly debated going to the ER tonight for IV fluids, but Kara did not want to wait. (current wait time: 6 hours) The urgent care down the street opens at 8 tomorrow morning, and we will go at that time. I put Gatorade in her tube at a very low flow rate. (10mL/hr). Hopefully it is slow enought that it does not upset her stomach. It is hard to see her on days like this and not be able to do anything to help her. 8:00 PM Friday September 21st ( 1 of 10 ) - Kara is in severe pain right now due to the Neouprin shots. She is to the point that she is almost dry heaving constantly because of it. She rates it as a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale, and has described it as "any pressure on her joints feels like her bones are being crushed." She is quite exhausted from it all. I asked her if she wanted to go in to get a Morphine shot, and she said that "she can not move. It took all she had to go to radiation and Folbe's office this morning." - Aparently the pain has been getting worse through the day because Becca (my sister) said that she was sleeping pretty hard at 4PM when Becca left for home. - I had a conference call with Dr. Folbe today, and he has decided that immediately after Kara's last chemo treatment on Monday, Kara will be admitted into the hospital. This comes as a great relief to me because she reacted quite strongly immediately after the last one, and this will allow her to get fluids, minerals, pain meds, etc. constantly. 10:00 PM Thursday September 20th ( 6 of 10 ) - Kara is feeling better today. She got another Neouprin shot today. There is quite a bit of pain associated with that shot, but is seems manageable with pain killers. She slept for most of the day and had two cans of food through the tube. She has also been eating half a box of Jello a day for the last week. She drank 36 oz of fluids today, and is currently forcing Gatorade through the tube with a plunger. An uneventful day. 8:15 PM Wednesday September 19th ( 5 of 10 ) - Kara was doing well for most of the day. At Dr. Folbe's office, they were able to get a good vein after only two attempts. The blood test revealed that her white blood cell count is low, so she got a shot of Neouprin in her stomach. She is scheduled for another shot each of the next two days. A side effect of this drug is "severe bone pain." She did fine for most of the afternoon, but by dinner time she was resting on the couch with her eyes closed. She is awake, but I can tell that she is in some pain. She will not say more than two words at a time, and will not open her eyes. - Her haid loss has subsided. We talked with Dr. Gustafson about it today, and he thinks that it will be perminate. The radiation laser spins around her as she lays on a table. As the radiation shoots through her neck and exits our the back of her head, the hair folicles are destroyed. The bottome 2-3 inches of hair on the back of her head is completely gone. Luckily you can only tell when she lifts up her hair because it is so thick. - She is very dehydrated. You can really see it in her face now. If you look closely, she looks 15 years older because of all the wrinkles. It is not for lack of trying to stay hydrated. Not only does she drink fluids all day, but she has been putting Gatorade directly into her feeding tube with a plunger. - As of today she has lost 12% of her body weight since her initial surgery. She is ecstatic. 8:30 PM Tuesday September 18th ( 5 of 10 ) - She is still doing well, but she had a worse day than yesterday. She had a consultation at Dr. Folbe's office so they could do some blood tests, but because of Kara's dehydration, the nurse had some trouble finding a viable vein. After five or six attempts to get a needle in her arm, the nurse gave up. We will try again tomorrow. - This seemed to set off her stomach (it may or may not have a direct correlation) because she became very nauseus for the next few hours. She has been able to keep everything down since dinner. - She was well enough to work on her computer for a couple hours, and she is again ignoring me (and Becca) in favor of her Blackberry, so I know that she is starting to feel like herself again. 8:30 PM Monday September 17th ( 6 of 10 ) - Kara is feeling much better today. She has had two cans of formula and some food with every meal, and she has kept it all down. She is working very hard to continue to eat because everything tastes like plastic, metal, or salt, and she is never hungry. - She actually did some work from home today, read a few pages of a book, and picked which TV shows we watched. All of which are firsts since her last chemo treatment. 8:30 AM Sunday September 16th ( 4.5 of 10 ) - Kara felt better today. She ate a few bites with every meal, and we gave her one can of formula at a very slow rate through her tube. She was able to keep all of it down. She was also up and alert through most of the day. Much more so than she has been for quite a while. |