The 2nd Week After the Rack and The Changing of the Guard

Just to update everyone, it's been a rather uneventful week, other than my skin looking like someone shot a blast of buckshot into my face... We had some great advice from one of the nurses who had gone through the same treatment back in 2002 to use Aveeno's oatmeal bath, which Ki turned into a mask/poultice and rubbed that over my entire head a few times.  Now it just looks like I had a chemical peel and since I'm using moisturizer a few times a day, my face is all smooth (I was worried there would be some scarring... ).  I guess it's like I had a burn from the inside out (my mouth was very red and took a while to recover as well).

So other than my bought of temporary leprosy, a fair amount of coughing, a slow return of being able to actually eat (I gather it was my taste buds being less raw and my stomach thinking it was okay to ingest food), loosing 10 lbs in the end (I wound up actually gaining 11 lbs of water weight - my legs, arms, hands and feet all were super puffy, and taking water pills for 2 days, so I dropped 21 lbs after coming home so far).

But I think I've gone through this stuff... the turtle effect I think was what I called it... well long story short, I look closer to normal now, and am 10 lbs down from my weight when I went in for my first week of infusions.  Quite the diet plan.  Much thanks to my friends Angel, Dino and Graham for providing some easy to eat food during last week.


So my mother and sister came this last Friday to be with me for 3 weeks as Ki had to head up to the Corvallis area for his next rotation.  The scheduling worked out really well.  I'm sad I had to get seriously ill for my mom to finally come to Oregon (kidding... :)  but it's really good to have them out here.  My mom having gone through breast cancer back in 1987, she really brings a wise awareness of what matters right now.  It's also good for Ki to have something else to focus on for a bit, as I haven't been able to do too much over the last week (and he doesn't have to suffer through me trying to watch the French Open tennis tournament lol).


Thanks to everyone for the well wishes, and kind notes of encouragement.  My primary focus remains to continue to de-stress and build my strength back up so I can start the last half of this first round next week with as much drive as possible.