Today I get to go in and get the bottle disconnected. I am looking forward to it. I am not sure if it is because I just got the port put in last week, but it is not comfortable at all. It is not painful, but I can feel it constantly and when there is a shift or change in the position of it then it creates a bit of discomfort. I can feel it in my chest and feel the flow of liquid inside when I breathe. There is also some tenderness under my armpit. I suspect that this is all due to the wounds themselves not being completely healed yet. That is what I am going to tell myself for now and we will see in the next couple of days. I forgot the fatigue that also gets progressively worse as the week moves on. Wednesday it is like this is easy, and then Thursday it is wow, this is tiring. I am not sure how cognizant I will be this afternoon seeing as I am exhausted this morning. I need to remember not to do certain things in the afternoon that requires quick thinking as it will not work out well for me. I remember at Vale when I tried to present at the end of the day on a Thursday afternoon and it ended up a complete debacle.
Yesterday Melanie and myself contacted a bunch of hospitals and some of them got back to us fairly quickly. We may be able to do a consult and have the procedure done at Henry Ford in Detroit Michigan. The costs seem to be relatively the same as what it would cost us in Spain. The upside is the reduction in cost of travel as we could drive to Detroit in just over 7 hours. I am not sure if it is worth flying as we would fly to Toronto and then to Detroit on a connecting flight I think that it might actually take more time as we would also need to rent a vehicle. The procedure is an outpatient procedure so it would be relatively quick and easy. The other hospital that we contacted was in Chicago. We have still not heard back from City of Hope for their clinical trials. Since Chicago and Henry Ford are not clinical trials then we would need to pay for the treatment out of pocket, same as Spain. Spain is more advanced with this procedure so we will see what happens. The date for Spain was pushed back however to April 23rd at the earliest that we could go. I think that Mel would prefer earlier treatment so if Henry Ford or Chicago can offer something quicker we would do that and see what happens.
I do not have much of an appetite today and the thought of actually eating food is making me a bit nauseous. I need to go eat something though and rest up for a bit otherwise I am going to lose weight. I am a bit light-headed and do not feel 100% at the moment so I am not sure exactly what I am going to do. My mother in law is going to be picking up Xavier soon and driving him to his Athletic Therapy session so if I am too tired to drive I might see if I can catch a ride with her to the hospital or I will make some other arrangements for transportation. At the moment I am not 100% sure if I feel comfortable driving and as it comes closer to disconnect time I will make a judgement call on what I will do. I ended up getting a drive to the hospital with Mel’s aunt. I did not think it was wise for me to drive myself and now that I am done I think I will take a nap in the afternoon. The discomfort is all gone now that the bottle is empty and disconnected. Some of it may have been due to all of the bandages that were on my chest. Now with it gone I am more comfortable but there is still some tenderness in the chest area. The instructions said not to lift more than 10lbs for 2 weeks and I actually can understand why now. When I lift anything there is tension there that pulls on it. Now that I am not being fed chemo drugs constantly I am in much better shape.
Mel got some fresh eggs from someone at work, and there is quite the difference between the quality of eggs from different people. Some have a deep rich orange yolk with a great flavour to the egg. For dinner tonight we will have some omelettes which the kids love to eat. I should start getting them to make them on their own using the omelette pan as my arm is still a bit sore. Tonight Olivier and I will start with a poolish for the bread and tomorrow we will start our baking process. Hopefully I can do it with him in the morning to mix the bread so we can get a 24hr ferment on the dough to bake on Saturday. He is all excited to bake some bread and wanted a charcuterie spread. I bought some cultures butter so we can eat his freshly baked bread with that.
Q