More Good News but Some Worries

Hello friends,

Today was a day of rest and recovery from yesterday's important visit to Hopkins.
The Kaiser senior oncologist gave us a rush appointment for next Tuesday. He also called Janet on the phone in the afternoon and discussed her case and her medication concerns for 15 minutes. He changed the medication schedule (we had already started to adjust it on our own) and made some recommendations to deal with our mounting concerns about constipation. He also told us that he was in complete agreement with the Hopkins physician and would start the chemo with the tarceva included next week. So this is the good news of the day: she will get state of the art treatment with close supervision by the Kaiser oncologist with the Johns Hopkins senior physician keeping an eye on things.

Janet is coping with a bad constipation problem today. Constipation is a common side effect of the pain control medications she is using. She had been using a prescription medication to offset this, but it was inadequate. Joan came by and prescribed prune juice which I fetched and administered. It wasn't enough and we had to call a Kaiser hot line this evening. An on-call oncologist called us and made some recommendations. We have to be careful not to hurt Janet or trigger any bleeding because of all the blood thinner medicine she is getting for the lung clot. Each day seems to bring some problem like this just as we solve some other problem. So let us hope the constipation is relieved tonight and that Janet can get some good rest this weekend in preparation for the rigors of next week.

george q.