I’ll admit it, it’s been a tough week.
I flew to New Mexico for a long weekend with my family and had a lovely time. I was waited on hand and foot, ate lots of green chile (and brought a fair amount home with me), and basked in the love and attention of friends and family. But the trip exhausted me. Everything exhausts me. It is becoming more and more difficult to get myself up and at ‘em in the morning and my pain levels are gradually increasing so that I will have to increase my Oxycontin dose with the next refill. My feet and ankles are swelling. But mostly I’m just so very tired.
I saw my oncologist for Gemzar and Zometa on Tuesday and have had no significant problem related to those this week. I’m still on fairly good doses of steroids because I wanted to feel as good as possible for my trip and then will wait until my off week from Gemzar before I try another dose reduction (next week). If I feel worse with the lower dose, we’ll go back up to where I was before any dose reduction and see if it helps the fatigue. If I feel better, we’ll keep trying to reduce the dose. I’ll get two more doses of Gemzar (for a total of eight) and then I have a scan scheduled on December 8. I don’t expect any good news from the scan - you all know that I don’t really think any of the treatments (except maybe Zometa) that I’ve received since I came off the original Carbo/Taxol/Avastin in August 2008 have really done much about my cancer. It’s just a slow growing, mostly in-the-bones cancer.
But it seems to be affecting more than the bones now, with the fatigue and swelling, and I’m feeling demoralized and worn down. I still have many things to keep me going at this point - quilts, Thanksgiving with my family, visits from friends and family - but I’m feeling less sure, less optimistic about how much of that will really come to pass. I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other and see where it takes me.