Surgeon Appt.

We met with the surgeon today and basically Barbara is released from her care although she is still available if needed and we will see her one more time to have the feeding tube removed.  We have decided to keep the feeding tube in at least through the first Chemo cycle and probably through the first week or two of the second cycle.  If the Chemo is causing her problems eating, we may go longer, but if not, then we will likely have it removed in about 6 weeks or so.  The tube is causing some pain when she moves the wrong way, but according to the surgeon this is normal when anything is going through the skin and as long as there is no infection, it is not a problem.

Barbara is getting better at eating.  She is learning (sometimes the hard way) how to eat now which is mostly just small bites and not too much at one time.  She has had a sharp pain low in her throat a few times, but that seems to be either if she swallowed too much at once and it got stuck going down or (my opinion) when she may eat a little too much at one sitting and it simply backs up a little.  She is learning to stop eating when she starts to feel even a little full and that seems to be helping, but it will take some time for her to get through all the changes and for her body to adjust completely.  She is eating pretty well now including a variety of different foods and she is getting a decent amount of food in a day, but I am not sure she will ever be able to really take in as many calories as she used to be able to.  This is the forced diet that she had talked about earlier which is probably a good thing (would be for all of us).  She should be able to get in enough calories very soon to be able to stop the tube feeding and we may only keep it just in case of problems eating during Chemo.  It will be a good backup especially for getting liquids into her if her mouth develops the bad sores again.

I think that covers things for now.  She goes in for the Chemo first thing on Thursday and I will try to do an update that evening on how it went as well as in the following days.  She is clearly not looking forward to that, but hopefully it will be better than the last time and at least it is getting close to the end.

Wayne