Chemo round 3

A beautiful sunny Sydney day, a day of Jack chauffeuring both Laurel and me around St Vincent's with Lizzie helping at home after school – we knew there was a reason for having kids!

Laurel had an operation on her hand, I had blood test and review with Dr Manders at the Kinghorn.

Same issues continue, extreme fatigue and zero appetite – the community team clarified some of the order of medicine and dosages so hopefully that may improve things a bit.

Dr Manders suggested getting outdoors more, especially getting Vit D – so sat in the garden and enjoyed the simple warmth of sun rays and sounds of human and wildlife endeavours – also found the original stone wall at the back of the garden, may be going a bit hippie here (is that the drugs kicking in?) – even tried a youtube hypnosis video to increase appetite – actually quite relaxing if nothing else…

So chemo round 3 begins tomorrow with a scan in a week or two to assess how we are going.

Hopefully at some point I can get back to some kind of normality and meet up with 'normal' people!

FYI
Medication I am now on:
Targin for back pain (10mg 1x daily)
Dexmethasone (2mg 1 x daily) for appetite and nausea
Nexium (20mg 2 x daily) acid reductioon
Pramin (3 x 10mg daily) for appetite and nausea
Allopurinol (1 x daily) a gout medication that cleans up left over debris following chemo
then Mirtazepine (1 x 15g in the evening) as a side effect it boosts appetite and also helps sleep and is an antidepressant to boot so it seems a great choice.

On my past Duderstadt DC treatment:

Not sure how much it has benefited me or how much of the four or five months of strength was due to coming off chemo but I have no regrets regarding the decision and am glad and hopeful we may have been a small part of developing this immunotherapy.

Interesting note From Claire's blog 'As Prof proudly said to Claire, "You are officially my longest surviving non chemo patient"'

Below are a few blogs for others on the journey.

Great news for Kate MacRae who had a clear scan. You can read her story here – Date for Kate

Peter Trayhurn's blog is in depth  – he's over in Germany now and also caught up with Claire in Duderstadt.

My own Duderstadt DC treatments are linked here.