Tuesday, August 17,2010
I am done with the radiation treatments!!!
I had my last treatment this morning. They gave me a certificate of completion like I had taken a Medical Education Course. Actually, I should get category 1 credit for all this as I learned so much.
I know what Michael Douglas has to look forward to, as he will have radiation for throat cancer. His will be worse than mine. I hope his trophy wife will be half as nice to him as Judy has been to me.
The printed information given to me says that after treatment ends, symptoms may still get worse for 7-10 days before there is any improvement. The electron beam treatments seem to be innocuous. The entire process takes only a few minutes. I lie on the same table with the same head holder, but no mask. They line up the machine with marks on my face which were drawn a week ago Monday by Dr John, and which have almost completely come off. They tape a stand-off pad to my cheek, generally running the tape onto my lips so I feel like a hostage. About 15 seconds of machine noise and I am done.
Dr John checked my skin yesterday, and there is an area behind my left earlobe which has broken down. I am to cleanse it with Hydrogen Peroxide diluted to 20% and then with water, and then cover the area with Silvadine cream, three times daily. This will take weeks to heal, but is relatively asymptomatic as my earlobe is still numb from my surgery. The skin in front of my neck and just above the left clavicle is worse than it was, and the Aloe Vera stings when I apply it. I am afraid it will begin to break down.
My other symptoms are unchanged and I won’t bore you with the details.
At the bridge club yesterday, Judy surprised me by arriving with a birthday cake for my 70th which is on Wednesday. It was a lemon cake, one of my favorites. Needless to say, I tried some but it was tasteless to me although everyone else really enjoyed it.
Playing with Bert who seems to have recovered nicely from his hospitalization, everyone must have felt it necessary to give me birthday gifts at the bridge table and we had a 72% game, one of the best in recent memory. For those who are unfamiliar with duplicate bridge, it means we had better results than others with the same cards 72% of the time on average. Usually, a score of around 62% will be a winner.
On Saturday, Judy’s birthday, she arranged her own party with Gary, Dana, Eva, Sara and Bel. Our sons presented us with a gift of two nights at the Martine Inn, a B&B in the Monterey area. We will likely go in late September. After cake and dessert, Eva announced that she had eaten a dozen strawberries. Not very smart to finish them all. Sara began to melt down, but I rescued Eva from parental anger and Sara from sisterly jealous anger by taking off to the store to buy more.
Last night, I took Judy to the salad bar, (Sweet Tomatoes), I ate without enjoyment, but it was the first time in a while that we ate out together, and that was good for both of us.
I plan to work three afternoons this week and likely will continue to work part time until I see some improvement in my taste buds, after which I want to visit Philadelphia to see Sammi and Eli, and Momtreal to see my mother, Seattle to see Dr Nghiem and perhaps some time in Vegas or a cruise or both.
On a final, and somewhat sad note, Eva was asked to submit some meaningful photos as part of her first homework assignment.
She submitted the photo below, taken when she was a baby, more than nine years ago.
In the top row are Judy, Eva and me
On the bottom row are Eva's maternal grandmother Mary, her great grandmother Esther (GG), Judy's mother, and my parents, Eva's great-grandparents, Isobel and Samuel Shuster. Of the four on the bottom row, only my mother survives.
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