Thursday, April 12, 2007

Another major milestone day! Last round of radiation therapy done! That was number 38! All done with both sides of therapy now - what a relief! It has been a rough road to go down through this battle and the strength of the support from my friends, co-workers, and most importantly my incredible family have helped me get through it. Andrea has been my rock throughout this entire thing and really has kept me on track and pushing on even when the pushing was tough.

Now what to do? Heal, heal, heal!!! Oh and the multitude of doctors follow ups and tests as we go. I am ready on the healing part though. I am ready to get back to eating food through my mouth instead of a tube, drinking a cold one, and getting back to normalcy and the daily grind! Oh, how I miss the grind!

We had a little party if you will after my RT today; Andrea baked a cake and brought it in with thank you written on it for the staff at Littleton. They are a great bunch of people there who help support not only me but provided a lot of support for Andrea as well. It was a great celebration and fun with those folks.

Tomorrow is the first day without anything like chemo or RT...I'm not sure we are going to know how to act! I will continue to get IV fluids on a daily basis for a couple of weeks until my fluid and food intake is coming more through the mouth but that is no big thing; no stress related to it.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Milestone day! Final chemo was done today! No more Erbitux for this guy! I spoke with the doc and we actually only did a half dose for the final. It seems like so very long ago that I got my first dose and now I am done. I'll still have to deal with the affects for awhile long but after this long I guess it is a small price to pay.

Later this afternoon is my next to last radiation therapy and tomorrow will be the last of that as well. Big stars on the calendar this week.

Now we just have to do all the scheduling and setting up of follow up appointments with the various docs and of course heal!

WOW! What a day!!!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Well we got the RT done yesterday as on schedule and this morning had another one down! I am now down to 2 more treatments on that end! What a relief! We had to work pretty hard to get past some issues that I was having dealing with the bite block and had to improvise a lot but now we have it down to a science (always at the end!). After the physical part of the treatment is over the radiation continues for awhile working on the inside but the outside can begin to heal. After the first 28 treatments the burn field was narrowed down considerably for these last ten shots so I am already seeing a lot of healing happening where there is no more in line contact.

Still on a considerable among of drugs from nausea, saliva, mucous, anti anxiety, anti depressant, pain meds, and who knows what else. I am looking forward to getting all this stuff out of the system and returning to normalcy once again.

Tomorrow is my next visit to the oncologist office so I many not post until late or wait until Thursday so I can explain the visit. We are on the run constantly it seems between different doctors, treatments, or locations as I get IV fluids 7 days a week. (arms are like bald, bruised, pin cushions!); and I still have to have down time to heal while its all going on. So hang in there gang, the worst is over and I'll post when I can.

Monday, April 9, 2007

Good morning, friends, family, and readers of my blog. First things first a very special thanks to my dad for helping me out with my blog during some pretty rough times. I guess this wasn't a much of a "walk in the park" that I was hoping for! But must importantly I'm back and still amongst the world or my part of it.

I won't try to fill in all the blanks during the "dark ages" of the past few weeks as I would much rather be looking positively forward at this point. I did had chemo last Wednesday, which I do have to say sucks and is getting really old. Not sure at this point if another will happen this week or not; the decision will be made later this week.

The biggest news is that I have only 4 more radiation treatments counting my one today! Yahoo!!!! That is a wonderful thing and then the healing can truly start. My neck is pretty burnt and it looks like I feel asleep on the sun and forgot to cover my neck from collar bones to the jaw line. It has cut down on the shaving though since my beard bearly grows where the radiation has been!

All is doing well and progressing positively at this point. I once again thank all of you for your thoughts prayers and concerns during my adventure. It means more than you will ever know.

To KLF, TVP, and TW thanks for the basket...it definitely brightened my day.

To the company thank you for the flowers they are beautiful and not only brightened my day but our Easter as well.

To KC and Sunshine Jane...thanks for the pics. It's good to see the gang again.

I'll attempt to start to writing every day again. Thanks,

Steve