I jinxed Joe when I said the 4 days of calm... Sunday night through to early Tuesday morning Cyn had a horrible time with nausea. Poor Joe was up every hour because she was throwing up every hour. The feeding tube also clogged up on Sunday so by Monday after radiation they were back at the hospital getting the feeding tube (its called a "J" tube) replaced yet again, but this time a larger diameter tube. Since then we have been flushing it with water regularly and it has remained clear.
Tuesday was chemo day and our appointment with Dr. Chen. He is still very concerned that the nausea has not let up. The only pattern we could find to the whole getting sick thing was that it usually starts the 5th day after chemo. Usually she's sick starting Saturday night, last week it started on Sunday night--- and chemo was a day later that week because of Labor Day.
We of course asked Dr. Chen if there was anything stronger he could prescribe and he spent the morning on Tuesday getting referrals to meds that would help the nausea. You see we are not sure if the nausea is just the chemo, since before chemo started Cyn already had problems keeping anything (solid or liquid) down. She would try all kinds of different textures and tastes and nothing would stay in her stomach. This is why she has the feeding tube. Now, we are not sure why the nausea has not gone away. She has not had anything to eat via her mouth in over a month. Even the doctors are perplexed.
Anyhow, we did get a couple of new meds that are stronger... but Dr. Chen warned that they would make her much more drowsy. One is a narcotic and the other is a steroid. We asked if we could wait to start using them until she really had another bad bout of nausea and he agreed.
So, Tuesday chemo day was uneventful. Wednesday was uneventful. Thursday the Radiation Oncologist let us know that she has 1 week of radiation to go this session and they are now doing a "boost" which is a more intense dose of radiation in hopes that it will shrink the cancer cells. Next Tuesday will also be the last day of chemo for this session. After that she will have a week or two of rest. Dr Colburn (the radiation dr) also took a scope to look at Cyns vocal chords to see why she does not have a voice. He confirmed what he thought, that the vocal chord is essentially "paralyzed" because of the cancer . He said not to worry too much about it and that it was common in people with lung cancer and if her voice didn't come back after treatment then he would recommend seeing a specialist (ears, nose and throat doctor) to take care of it. Neither he nor Dr. Chen think we should worry just yet. I'm not so sure.
I spent time with Cyn trying to get her to exercise her legs. Since she is so tired all of the time she spends most of her time sleeping. Last night I made her do three leg lifts while laying on her back. She did 2 sets of 3 reps on each leg then also moved each leg out to the side and back three times, and she was exhausted when we were done. What's most difficult is to see her this way, always sleeping or wanting to lie down. I also made her some chicken broth today, and she took a few sips with no problems. Its almost as if she doesn't want to make the effort to take anything by mouth since she knows the feeding tube is taking care of that..... this from someone who I considered a foodie! We are going to start making her take more than just ice chips in when we can. Clear broths are our next step, I only hope she keeps trying.
We will find out next Tuesday how long her "rest" is, and when they will be reviewing and determining next steps.
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