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Swenson column: Tickle me chemo — sore throats and sleepless nights
| Tuesday, Dec 18 2007 9:05 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Dec 18 2007 9:25 PM
Tickle.
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What a cute word.
Except in a cancer patient, when tickle can be insidious.
As in a tickle on the throat.
That makes you cough. Coughing robs your sleep. It also precedes pippyup (ed. note: "pippyup" is Steve's nice way of saying he's vomiting). That propels you to the porcelain, which also robs your sleep.
Then on especially bad pippyups, your throat is seared. Swallowing, which you do right after coughing, hurts. Not good for sleep either.
The above is a nutshell of how I was for a week after my last chemo treatment on Dec. 6. I'd write a book about it and call it "Misery," but this other Stephen (King) guy pre-empted me.
Let's go back to the searing throat. On the Friday and Saturday night after the chemo, it just hurt too much to swallow.
Well, I have this backup plan for getting food into my belly. The previously mentioned stomach tube.
Beginning that Sunday, that's now how I eat. Equal parts Ensure and water. (Warm water, I might note, because cold water makes my tummy shiver).
The Ensure comes in three flavors -- vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, a regular Neapolitan. I wouldn't taste any of them if I didn't burp once in awhile.
I fed myself on Sunday. What an arduous process of filling up the big plastic syringe, laying it down, opening the tube, squeezing it so it doesn't leak, putting the syringe in, trying to push the plunger down with one hand, and when done, squeezing the tube with one hand, removing the tube with the other, and plugging the tube so we can do it all over again. All while standing up though you are exhausted from the previously noted lack of sleep.
I did that three times on Sunday and it took nearly all my strength.
So I enlisted the help of my wife, Mary. She skyrocketed on my lovability chart. She can do in 10 to 15 minutes what it took me more than a half-hour to do. And she gets in two cans while I could only do one.
I have to eat six cans a day. Otherwise I will become too skinny. No one likes a skinny man.
Or one with a neck that's blotched and sunburned with wrinkly skin like an old desert prospector without enough sense to seek shade.
This unattractive new look of mine comes from 20-plus radiation treatments to my neck. (I have throat cancer for the new readers)
Combine radiation and chemo, and you get one sick laddie. The chemo effects should have ended by the next Thursday, but Wednesday night was a regular well-worn path to the pippyup tank.
Dr. Dean Davis, my radiation oncologist at the Florence Wheeler Cancer Center by Mercy Hospital, took pity on me. He prescribed Ativan, a midbrain sedative which is supposed to overcome my pippyup tendencies.
And, Hallelujah, can I hear you say once again? Hallelujah, it did! That in combination with this horribly expensive drug, Zofran, I slept like a wrinkled-neck baby Thursday night. My midbrain was happy with itself. Content in a whirlpool of euphoria.
I would like to tell Dr. Kenneth Frank (the man just sentenced for raping two women after giving them Ativan so they couldn't resist his sexual attack), that there are beneficial uses of Ativan that won't land you in prison for 12 years.
I will be continuing with radiation for 39 sessions, ending Jan. 11 by my calculations. Dr. Davis says the last three weeks will be lighter doses. (You can fry beef shank only so much and it becomes too tough to chew).
Other good news is he told me on Dec. 4 that my tumor had shrunk by more than 75 percent. The next week, he felt my neck all over and said he was very pleased with the results.
That means we're going to kick this thing out. Hopefully for good. That makes me happy, in a squashing-a-pesky-bug sort of way.