Long time no post!

It seems like it's been forever since I've made a post on here. I'm losing steam of keeping this thing up to date. Seems like I just write the same thing over and over. I forget where we left off, so I'll just guess rather than take the two minutes it will take to read the last post.

I have had one cycle (which is two weeks on, one week off... I'm on the off week) of Xeloda. I like it from a convenience perspective. It definitely made me more fatigued than the two day IV did. I also developed much more severe hand and foot syndrome by the end of it. It wasn't too bad up until the last couple of days. By the last Sunday and the first Monday off (this Monday) I basically couldn't walk straight because my feet were so sensitive. I talked to Dr. Kasamon about it today and he said my symptoms "weren't that bad" and he is right given how much worse it could be, though it still sucked. There is a fine line to draw between managing symptoms and killing cancer. We're going to work through a few more cycles titrating the dose down until we can get it so that the irritation doesn't get quite to the point it did this time.

We also (again) discussed how weird my particular presentation of rectal cancer was. He commented that if my primary tumor had been higher up in my colon it likely would have taken 10 years to metastasize it's way out. It's probable that mine took a lucky quick route out of my rectum into this peripheral lymph system that runs up and down your spine, which could explain my distant metastasis in my neck. Nobody will ever know for sure though, not that it really matters either. We also talked about Horner's symdrome (one pupil bigger than the other), which is what they're calling what I have. Apparently there are two sets of ganglions (like mini-brains, just a big ball of nerves) running up and down your spine on each side that perform a sort of first-pass processing of nerve signals before getting to your brain. Well it turns out that one of the ganglions that control some muscles in the face and eyes is right next to your subclavian vein where central lines (e.g. a port) are placed. It's odd that it took so long after having a port and what-not that this happened, and it's also odd that it's on the opposite side. But interesting nonetheless. I'm going to see a neurophomologist sometime in the near future who specializes in this sort of thing. I doubt there's anything really to be done about it, but we'll see. For whatever reason this month is absolutely ridiculous in terms of doctors visits and things of that sort. I count about 15 appointments that I have over the month of September.

I went for a bike ride today, first one in quite some time. It didn't go so well. I'm in terrible shape, and I had a milkshake at lunch. That was also a bad idea. I hope that I can make it out to ride at least vaguely more often. Even the 45 minutes today was a hell of a lot better than the nothing that I usually do. I want to go camping this weekend, though I haven't yet shared this fact with Emily. Maybe we'll drag Pat and Minh Chau along too! The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous the last few days and will continue to be as such for another week or so it seems. A cold front came through. Lows at night in the 50s, highs in the day low 70s. It's like Fall only earlier!

Emily and I bought a "real" bed finally this Monday. No more sleeping on a futon, though I have come to rather enjoy it. I suspect neither of us is sleeping all that well thanks to it though. As several of you have figured out, we spent an obscene amount of money on a queen size Tempur-Pedic "RhapsodyBed". We've slept on one before (at Emily's former Florida neighbor's house) and it was pretty amazing. Tempur-Pedic pillows are also very nice and they kindly threw a few of those in to sweeten the deal. But good lord does the stuff smell terrible out of the factory! We've got a pillow in my room airing right now so it doesn't gas us in our sleep. So we skipped from futon to one of the most expensive "sleep systems" you can get! Woohoo!

Here are some pictures from our Florida trip:

This is me sitting under an umbrella at the pool.

A big old Florida banana spider

A couple of big ole' Florida banana spiders