The Patient is Home and Resting Comfortably!

After a week at our University Medical Center, all of a sudden there was a flurry of activity to get her moved out and sent home!  She had her gastroscopy on Wednesday, and, no surprise, showed that her esophagus was inflamed from radiation burns.  Besides the inflammation, she also had a pair of non-bleeding ulcers also from radiation.  Mostly it will need time to heal.  Unfortunately nothing they could offer was able to really take the pain from swallowing away, and it finally started to moderate the day of the procedure.  Then, likely the endoscopy itself caused its own pain, and her improvement is sort of on hold for the moment.  So now when she swallows, the pain is an "8" instead of the "10" she had her first days in the hospital.  But she is able to sip water and tonight had a yogurt.  After the weekend we'll head back to the Cancer Center for IV fluids and a check to make sure her improvement continues.

So she is home getting reacquainted with the cats!  In the picture at left, she is surrounded by Hootie, the black cat to her right, and Annie on the left.  Annie gets mats in her fur, so got a clip job just a few weeks ago, so looks a little funny with her fuzz growing out, yet sporting a mane that the groomer left.  And speaking of fuzz, I think this is Melinda's first picture showing her hair growing out, though it too is starting to fall out from chemo round 7 that she got 2 weeks ago...  You just can't win with all these treatments going on.  There was some talk of it coming out anyway with her full-brain radiation which is still coming up, but someday it will be back!  And as for further treatments, the plan is to let her off all of next week for recovery, then a "remapping" to try to minimize further damage to her esophagus before the second half of her chest treatments, then on to the brain treatments.  A bit of a delay this last week, but we're still in it for the long haul!