Radiation Week 1

At lot has happened since my last update. The week of Christmas I continued to have severe pain and decided to make another trip down to Denver to see if they could help (12/29). I was put on a slow release morphine pill along with the Oxy and Tylenol I was already on. It seemed to help for a few days but the severe pain returned after New Years. On the first day of my radiation (1/8) they decided to up my morphine. I also started supplementing the pain medicine with some cannabis products and have felt a lot better over the last week. It's hard to say if it's the increased morphine, cannabis or the radiation but I am grateful to currently be feeling good. I am going to start working with a palliative care nurse to help with the pain management side of things and to help get off the pills as I get better.

The first week of radiation has been pretty easy. For the actual radiation I am giving a pager when I check in. When the pager goes off I go to a changing room where I put on a fashionable hospital gown or two. I then wait for the phone to ring and for the techs to summon me to the radiation room. Once in the room I climb onto the table and lie on my stomach into the mold that was created last month. The techs then make sure everything is lined up. They then leave the room and shoot me with radiation. The machine makes a lot of noise but I don't feel anything. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. So far I have not noticed any negative side effects from the radiation. I also take six chemo pills every radiation day.

Once a week I'll meet with both my radiation and medical oncologist. This week there was not much new to report from them. I also saw a urologist this week regarding my mutant ureter and will be undergoing a couple tests over the next couple weeks to see if the tumor is creating issues on that front. Finally I have started to make plans for a trip to the Mayo Clinic at the end of February. This will involve tests and appointments with several different doctors to discuss my upcoming surgery. I'm sure Minnesota in February will be wonderful.

I'll try to keep everyone updated as things move along. So far so good!