Been a while

It's been a while since my last post. Not a whole lot has been going on. Just normal "life" things.

Last weekend Emily and I went out to Frederick and ate at a Cuban place for lunch (which wasn't altogether impressive). Then we drove up to Catoctin Mountain Park and hiked around for a couple of hours, nothing too serious. Though it was good to get outside. We missed a turn or something and ended up on a mountain road and had to walk a few miles back on it. The route was supposed to be a loop through the woods. Oh well. The original plan was to drive back to Frederick, waste some time, and eat dinner at Nido's, a nice Italian restaurant. It seemed a little silly to eat out twice in one day, but whatever. We were still quite stuffed, and I honestly wasn't feeling all that good, after our hike so we just came home.

I continued to feel worse and it culminated with some stomach emptying in the wrong direction in the middle of the night. I felt pretty terrible on Sunday as well. I thought I might have been constipated, because when you get really constipated your tummy rejects more stuff being put into it. I took several methods to alleviate this which eventually worked, but honestly I'm not sure I really was all that constipated. I didn't see it coming and usually I can. I think I just got a stomach bug or the Cuban didn't agree with me. I went to work on Monday though.

In fact I went to work all week long and it was mildly eventful. I finally finished my "performance review" documents that one must fill out to theoretically get promoted at some point in the future, though I am under no pretensions that I will get a promotion this year. I felt like just putting "Got cancer, had chemo, un-got cancer" on it, but refrained.

This Saturday we went out to Red Canoe for lunch. I really like that place. I think it might be my favorite place to go eat in this area. It just exudes small-town local charm, even though it's square in NE Baltimore. The owners are extremely friendly too. I find myself wanting to go there and buy lunch, coffee, dessert, and muffins for breakfast all at once. (and I usually do)

I have chemo on Monday again. Saturday we leave for Florida for a whole week, which will be great..

I saw Dr. Kasamon again on Friday. I have a prescription for Xeloda (oral 5-FU) which we're going to try out starting with the next treatment. That means I will come in on Mondays for a 30 minutes infusion of Avastin and that's it. I don't have to take a pump home either. Because Xeloda works over a longer time they can take my blood on Mondays as well, rather than me having to go in on Fridays or to Quest on Saturdays for blood work. It promises to be a great way to transition back to more normal life. It is possible it will have worse side effects for me though. Won't know until I try. I know John S., whom some of you have seen in his blog, has had terrible problems with Xeloda. But he seems to have exactly the opposite sorts of problems as me. Anyway, like I said, I won't know until I try. It'll have to be pretty bad to get me to sign back up to a 4 hour injection, 46 hours of home-pumping, and constipating for the next 5 days.

Also, Xeloda is about $3,000 a month! The IV 5-FU (which has been off-patent since like 1960) is like $50/month (not including the cost of getting it into me via IV). I met my catastrophic deductible for the year long ago so I am in the strange position of not caring how much anything costs because it costs me effectively nothing.