Wednesday, Jan 17, 2007

Wednesday January 17, 2007

Well, today was not just another day. It started before I got out of bed with my left side hurting like pneumonia pain. It was not extremely bad so I did not get up before normal time. At Duke they always want to know how the pain is on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most severe. I rated it a 3 this AM. It was an 8 or 9 at the emergency room last week.

I called the radiation department; like I was supposed to if I had any problems. They told me to come in at 2 PM and they would check me out. I was not running any fever this morning, but I was not running any last week in the emergency room either. Two doctors listened to my lungs and ordered an X-ray. I will get the results tomorrow when I go for treatment. They gave me Ibuprofen 800mg to take every 8 hours. That has not helped the pain yet; maybe they will have a solution for me tomorrow.

Note: blue article below is X-rated. You may not want your young children to see it!

While waiting for treatment today, Patsy and I were talking to a 90 year old woman in the waiting room. (All children, old people, and animals always find Patsy.) She had already had chemotherapy and was now having radiation. She said radiation was easy compared to Chemo. She was very upbeat and looked terrific for 90 years old. She said, “I am legally blind, have one boob, and no hair and don’t give a d--.” What a great attitude!

Tonight the residents at the Caring House had a community supper. They even had dishes Patsy and I could eat. One dish was vegetarian lasagna with 12 different organic vegetables and cheese. They had green beans, roll, broccoli salad, and other things that I could not eat. There were at least five different desserts. Patsy took a chocolate fudge cake. I did not eat one of each dessert, but 4 pieces of the chocolate cake. I must keep my weight up. I have already lost about 2 lbs. Now I have an excuse to eat anything I want!

We even had entertainment. There is a Methodist preacher here who is getting radiation, and he played numerous tunes--off key--on a fiddle. I wanted to tell him “I used to wish I could play the fiddle, but now I wished he could play it.” Patsy said that wouldn’t be nice.

I will get my radiation tomorrow again at 3:30 PM. Then on Friday it will be at 9:15 AM. We will leave for Florence after that and our son, Chris, will visit us Saturday and Sunday. He is giving talks and presentations at USC, Columbia on Thursday and Friday.

I did find out today that they plan to give me 36 treatments instead of 39. For you math teachers, I was 25 % complete on Tuesday.
So that means Thursday’s treatment number is ___? You can put your answer in the comments section.