I apologize for not updating sooner. It's been a busy week in our household and I haven't had much time on the computer at all. However, there haven't been too many changes over the last week or so, which is definitely good news.
Dad is now about half way through his treatment schedule. He's been going for radiation every Monday to Friday and has also been taking the oral chemotherapy 7 days a week, so we're nearing the end of Week 2. The first few radiation treatments took about half an hour, as everything needed to be explained, but now that Dad has been going for this long, he's only in the room about 10 or 15 minutes. Family has been able to go along and watch and Jared and I were there on Wednesday. It was a very cool experience. Dad lays down on a table and they place the 'helmet' over his face. It's clamped down onto the table and they line up the helmet using laser beams from the ceiling. Then everyone leaves the room and Dad is "zapped" three times for a couple minutes each time. The machine that emits the radiation is a lot larger than we thought it would be, and it rotates around whatever part of your body is being treated (in Dad's case, his head.) The table on the floor also rotates to accomodate whatever angle the treatment is coming from. It's very neat. There are computer moniters just outside the room and that's where visitors get to watch. If Dad needs out of the helmet at any time, all he has to do is wave a hand and they will come unlatch him. I asked him if he feels anything while the treatments are happening, and the only thing that he feels is a bit of pressure from the helmet on his face. Anyone who has clautrophobia would NOT like this sort of thing! You can also hear a whirring sound in the background while the radiation is happening, but besides that, it's a very quick and painless procedure.
Dad has also had some adjustments made to his medications in the last week. He had been on three steroid pills a day and three anti-seizure pills a day. However, he was having some slight tremors on his right side, and so they lowered the steriods to two a day and upped the anti-seizure medication to 4 pills a day. He goes for blood work at least once a week to check on how all the medications are working together and to make sure everything is staying balanced, and on Wednesday Dad mentioned that they had lowered the steriods down to one and a half pills a day. It seems like it's a bit of a fine art trying to balance out all the different levels of drugs that he's on, but thankfully there are very skilled people at HSC to take care of all that! And Mom has been doing an amazing job of keeping track of all of Dad's pills and which ones need to be taken with food, which ones without food, etc. etc.
Physically Dad is still doing really well. He still gets tired easily, but I don't think he has many complaints beyond that. No sign of any hair loss yet that we've heard of, so all in all, I think he's faring pretty well. Now it's just a waiting game until treatments are done and Dad has another MRI to see how well the tumor has responded to all of these drugs!!!
And finally, because my description won't do it justice, here are a few pictures from Dad's treament on Wednesday.
The computer screens that we watched on. The door to the room is to the right of these moniters and Dad is essentially on the other side of the wall behind the screens.
A view from inside the room.
The helmet! Jared said it reminded him of Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs.
1 comment:
Dana,
Thanks so much for the update. I continue to pray for God's healing for Gerald. May you and your family continue to draw on his strength.
Diane
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