Chemo series 2, round 3

Since I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, I have spent the bulk of my time at home sleeping. I have no energy whatsoever. That may be a good thing - it forces me to rest and removes any temptation to overdo it puttering in my workshop. I sure am happy to be home.

By Friday morning, there were no further signs of blood in my urine, so I was supposed to remove my catheter myself. I wasn't looking forward to doing that myself, but I was anxious to get rid of the thing. In the end, it went well, with not too much pain. I had some control problems afterward, but I feel I'm getting back to normal now.

Friday I was back at Cancer Care for my next round of chemo. My blood counts were fine so we proceeded, with the lower dose as discussed in a previous post. There's not much more to report since I don't do anything.

Here's a picture of me at the hospital last week, enjoying the view from the 10th floor visiting room which was right next to my room. Notice all the tubes connecting me to my "dance partner."

Discharged!

Hi folks. It's me again, home from the hospital. They discharged me around 10:30 this morning. That gave me time to get a shower, eat some breakfast, trade my bed bag for a leg bag (for the catheter), and get my last IV removed before Donna got there to take me home.

I had only a fair night. I had more problems with my catheter clogging, but finally it passed a big long clot that seems to have been the source of my recent problems. At least I haven't had any more trouble since. They gave me a sleeping pill and I managed to get some sleep. My biggest problem was anxiety, fearing something would go wrong that would prevent me from coming home today.

I've done a lot of sleeping since I got home, catching up on lost rest, I guess. I continue to battle the pain and I'm looking forward to getting rid of this catheter.

Click here for more details about my Vena Cava Filter and the procedure I went through yesterday. Click here for a picture of a filter.

I mentioned in my Jan 15 post that I'm experimenting with faith and religion. In the hospital I had plenty of time to ponder and experiment. I prayed for recovery and I got it. It's difficult for me to declare this a miracle, and the old me would have just chalked it up as coincidence. But I have no other explanation for how my problem was cured. The doctors didn't even know what the cause was, not without some invasive procedure, and even if they knew they warned that they might not be able to do anything to fix it. Then, "miraculously," the problem went away, overnight. And it just happened to be the night that I got a blessing from members of Donna's church. Believe what you want, but personally I'm giving the credit to God.

Hospital Day 5

Unfortunately, this is still Donna writing. We had hoped for Calvin to be home by now, but it didn't happen. Right now he is scheduled to be discharged to come home tomorrow, Wednesday. At noon today he had a vena caval filter inserted through his jugular vein and deposited in his inferior vena cava. That went very well, and because of the procedure he has been confined to bedrest, and will be through the night. With that in place the coumadin, his blood thinner medicine, has been decreased to half the amount he was taking. He has had some more problems with the catheter clogging this afternoon, but hopefully they are resolved. He was taken off the morphine pump this afternoon, and is back on Oxycontin and Oxycodone again. Which also means he got to get rid of that annoying CO2 monitor line that has been in his nostrils these past few days. His pain is still being kept under control. We finally finished watching the "Hatari" video this afternoon, and this evening we played a lousy game of Phase 10 (Calvin won). So this should be the last time you read Calvin's blog written by me. Unless Calvin just doesn't feel up to it tomorrow, then I will post an update to let you know the latest and that hopefully he is back home.

Hospital Day 4

This is still Donna writing. Calvin did not sleep well last night. The bed is not that comfortable and he can't turn over or lay on his side with IV tubing and a Catheter tube. So today he dozed off and on a lot. His urine continues to be yellow. When the two urology doctors came in this morning both said they would discharge him to go home today. But the chemo doctors still had to see him. It was after lunch before someone from their practice came in. Because of the morphine he has been on, he could not be discharged today. He must be weaned off it over a 12 hour period. He is being started back on Oxycontin and Oxycodone gradually as well. They have also decided to insert a blood clot filter into a vein in his abdomen so that his blood thinner drug can be decreased. With cancer there is always the chance of a blood clot so this should prevent one from travelling into his lungs, brain, heart, etc. if one was to develop somewhere. They are trying to get that scheduled to be done tomorrow morning. If Calvin's blood is still too thin when they check it in the morning they will have to wait until another day to do the procedure. (It would be done as an outpatient.) He has been on blood thinners since July. It was only stopped on Friday. He only took one walk around the halls today - too drousy. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon sometime he will be home. If they cannot do the procedure until late in the day he will not be discharged until Wednesday.

Hospital Day 3

This is Donna writing again. Calvin had a very good night last night. He says he "slept like a log". When he woke up he was pretty excited to see yellow urine flowing through his catheter tube. All day long it was pale red in color which is a big improvement. Also, no clogs clogged the line so the catheter never needed to be flushed. After I arrived at the hospital this morning, he wanted to get a shower, so his nurse unhooked him from his IV bag and morphine pump and he took a most refreshing hot shower. His urologist came in shortly after that. He liked what he saw and said he would NOT be doing a cystoscope. He feels the bleeding is on its was to clearing up on its own. He is guessing that Calvin might be able to go home in a couple/few days. The catheter will remain in place when he is discharged. Tomorrow morning he will be back in to check on Calvin again. Today Calvin took his first walk around the hallways. And then throughout the day he took two more strolls around. He is still on the morphine pump. I am hoping they will wean him off of it tomorrow. Before he can come home they want him off the morphine and back on oxycontin and oxycodone. They have also started him back on a blood thinner - Lovanox for now. He played one good game of Canasta (meaning he won), and one lousy game of Rummy (meaning I won). We also watched the first half of "Hatari", one of his favorite movies.

Hospital Day 2

This is still Donna writing. Last night was not a very good one for Calvin. He finished receiving his 2 bags of blood around midnight. While receiving the blood, which took about 5 or 6 hours, his vital signs had to be checked every hour. (Now they are checked every 4 hours.) He was in a lot of pain and did not sleep much last night. The end of the catheter where it exits his body was very painful. So he asked for and received a tube of analgesic gel to apply to that area and that pain is now under control. He also began having severe low back/sciatica pain. His nurse got him a water heatingpad and that has helped a lot. A new pain drug was added to his medications. He was hooked up to a morphine pain pump that he controls by pushing a little green button which releases a dose of morphine through the IV line. He needed it a lot in the night, but not as much today. While on the morphine pump he has to have his CO2 levels monitored, so he has to wear a tube line at his nose which keeps a check on his breathing. Twice during the night his catheter quit draining due to blood clots. His nurse had to come in both times and back flush the catheter, breaking loose the clots and enabling the catheter to do its job. Only one other time during today was that necessary.

But today his pain was very well managed and under control. All the pain medication, as well as the lack of a good sleep, has caused Calvin to be very drowsy and he slept off and on all day long. He is eating his meals, and drinking his waters. We even watched a Miss Marple movie together this afternoon, but it took us about 4 sessions to get through it. Calvin kept drifting off to sleep. The missionaries that Calvin has been talking to stopped in and visited him this evening and gave him some more to think about. In the morning the urologist will be stopping back in. This morning he told us that he wanted to wait 24 hours and see if Calvin still has as much blood in his urine, or if things have improved. He may do a cystoscope or not tomorrow. We will find out after he sees Calvin in the morning and decides what the next step will be.

Hospitalized

This is Donna writing. Calvin can't come to the computer right now. Yesterday (Thursday) he started seeing blood in his urine - quite a lot of it. We went to Cancer Care for his scheduled chemo at 12:30 today (Friday). He had called them earlier in the day and let them know about this new development. They took a urine specimen and did a CBC blood test. His hemoglobin count was 7.1 - less than half of normal. Also, his blood pressure was 98/60 - very low for him. They started him on IV fluids and cancelled chemo and instead, had him admitted to St. Joseph Hospital in Asheville. So far they have given him fluids in IV and also a blood tranfusion. While I ran home to get Calvin a few things he wanted, a urologist stopped in and expressed his concerns about blood clots in Calvin's bladder. So he ordered a catheter. I missed out on that "fun". Despite 20 mg of Oxycodone and 10 mg of Valium in his IV, it was still a very painful ordeal, almost as bad as when he got one in Arizona last year (see June 10 in this blog). He has also been given Morphine. So for now we just wait. Wait for Saturday morning when the urologist checks him again. A cystoscope will probably be done to look inside his urinary track to try to find the cause of the bleeding. What he finds will determine what happens next.

Or Maybe It Is Working

Compared to the pain of the past three weeks, I feel really great today. It's funny, but it wasn't long after writing that last post that I started to feel a little better. I felt so good yesterday that I even did a little puttering in my basement workshop. The pain is still there, but with the pain killers I'm able to tolerate it again.

We met with my oncologist today and we agreed that the current chemo regimen has stabilized my condition, more or less. We are going to continue treatment starting this coming Friday. The only change is that instead of a big dose once every 3 weeks, I'll get a smaller dose once a week for 3 weeks, then get a week off. That should help with the side-effects.

Looking forward, my options are still very limited. Chemo is not going to cause any significant shrinkage of the prostate tumor, at least not enough to alleviate the pain in that area. At some point I'm going to have to consider some kind of "local" treatment, like surgery (fraught with risks though it would be).

Most of you know I'm not a religious person. So you'll be very surprised to learn that I went to church yesterday. I haven't had some miraculous conversion or anything like that. Let's just say that I'm re-investigating something I had written off many years ago. I'm going to try nurturing whatever seed of faith is left in me. I went to church with an open mind and nothing to lose, and actually enjoyed it. Time will tell where it will all lead. As will all else, I will keep you posted through this website.

Chemo Not Working

I've been feeling a lot worse lately. I feel about like I did last August with lots of pelvic, low back, and abdominal pain. I had a CT scan Thursday and met with the doctor yesterday to discuss it. It confirmed my fears. My lungs are "stable," i.e. one lump is larger, one is smaller, and the rest are about the same. But my prostate tumor appears larger and more "undefined." I was scheduled for chemo, but we decided to postpone. Cancer Care got me an appointment with my urologist to discuss options, of which there are few: another Foley catheter, a "super-pubic catheter" (this goes directly to the bladder, bypassing the prostate), or surgery. He checked a urine sample and tested me for retention which showed that I'm retaining very little urine. We decided to take a wait-and-see approach for now. Meanwhile I meet with my Cancer Care doctor again on Monday and we'll probably decide to continue chemo, possibly with a different drug.

In other news... Donna's mom is back home in New Jersey and Allison is back to college, full of enthusiasm about the new semester. Now things can get back to normal around here, or whatever passes for "normal" these days.

Happy New Year

Christmas has come and gone. So has 2006, and good riddance to it. Here's hoping for a better 2007. Donna's mom left us on 26-Dec to visit her son and family in Georgia. Donna's son Joe and his wife and 4 kids came to visit for the New Year's weekend, driving down from Michigan on 29-Dec and leaving just this morning. Donna's birthday was 31-Dec, so we had two reasons to stay up late that night celebrating. So you see it's been a busy holiday season for us. My chemo side-effects have been steadily tapering off during this time. I should have a couple of good weeks ahead of me before my next treatment on the 12th. So Happy New Year, everybody!