Karen's Blog

Karen’s stay at the Clinic will be for at least another few days, even if all goes well. For the next few days I’ll be creating a blog post for the day, and will update that blog a couple times a day. That means that blog posts may change through the day. I did this…

Karen started feeling ill Sunday evening and got worse Monday before we headed out to Chemo. We considered going to a local ER, but Karen felt better about being seen at the Clinic. She is bleeding internally, and the docs aren’t sure exactly where. It is likely from a couple places, but of varying degrees….

Karen received her second dose of Topotecan earlier this week, and spent several days recuperating. The Topotecan doesn’t knock her completely out, but makes her feel generally icky and sick. She’s been taking anti-nausea and pain meds around the clock for about a month, so that’s helped. Monday she had an infusion of two units…

The Topotecan sickness hit Tuesday, and Karen had many of the same side effects as previous medications. There was the same queasiness, extreme fatigue, sleepiness, etc. Since she took some of the anti-nausea meds prophylactically there were fewer cookies being tossed. Another big change over the last week has been with pain management. She has…

Karen had her first dose of Topotecan yesterday, and is scheduled to receive another dose the next two Mondays. This will be followed by a one week break and then with round 2. Solid food isn’t agreeing with Karen right now. She’s tried a few meals over the last week, and hasn’t kept them down…

Karen’s kidney function is continuing to improve, and they are sending her home today. We’re stuck here for a couple hours with the discharge process, and while they get us some of the supplies we’ll need at home to relive her stomach pressure. I’ll not go into all those details… She’s still feeling lousy, but…

Karen had additional lab work Monday that showed her kidney function in decline, so the docs admitted her to the hospital. The fluid pressure in her abdomen is causing some distress on her kidneys, so they performed a procedure to relieve that pressure. The procedure this time was a little more involved, as they installed…

The doc at MD Anderson promised to bring up her case to the cancer board to see if they might have some other option coming up, but he wasn’t able to find anything. While waiting on that, and the scheduled chemo for Thursday, we checked out a few options on the Internet. We looked at…

Karen and I are back home from our trip to MD Anderson in Texas. The travel was hard on her, so it’s a huge relief to be back here. First thing we did when we got back last night (about midnight or so) was have some hot dogs and Doritos, and hit the sack. Both…

Karen and I are still down at MD Anderson, but she has an appointment this morning with a Targeted Therapy doc. We’ve been trying to work our way through their system this week, and it went a little slowly. We booked a flight back later tonight, but can cancel it if the doc needs us…