Cycle 5

-
By the end of this cycle, my dad's ALT has dropped to 20+, which is his usual reading. So that's good.

Another good news is that the gap between morphine intake has widen to 7 hours now. Fantastic!

Everything else is under control, except that every now and then he has low appetite but kudos to him (after much persuasion from his family and the hospice nurse) for having small amount of food but more frequently when that happens.

The daycare oncology section in their own building (the "green" building) has finished undergoing renovation. Although we've been to that building before, it was in the clinic side. It was then our first time going to the daycare section. Luckily it wasn't too cold. However there is a change in procedure: they asked all carers to leave the section once chemo started. Don't know why the change.

When we asked the oncologist for the tumour marker result, he didn't find any lab report in my dad's file. I also observed that the nurses didn't attempt to try to find it. Quite strange. The doctor surmised that it wasn't ready. Okkkkk.

The next chemo session, Cycle 6 Day 1, was supposed to be scheduled in 2 weeks time but all staff would be attending a course. So they proposed a 4-day postponement to Tuesday. However, my dad asked for Friday i.e. postponed for 1 week, which would be 3 weeks away. This is because Friday session is reserved for patients that require only 1 type of chemo drug and so we get to leave about 1.5 - 2 hours earlier compared to other days.

Hours later, when chemo was done and we were ready to leave, we asked the nurses for the tumour marker result, saying that perhaps it was now available. They tried searching through 2 folders but to no avail. Then one of them left and went to the clinic side. Meanwhile, I suggested to my dad that if it wasn't ready, we could ask whether it would be fine for us to call the following week for the result. Fortunately that was a moot point because the nurse managed to get the results: 47, down from 49.

Although it's a small drop, it's still good news because it's going in the desired direction.

Well, next cycle is the last one for my dad. I hope it'll be good news all the way.

Comments

Twilight Man said…
I am very happy to hear about your father's recovery progress.
Sometimes things may take a sudden turn and we need to be alert & mentally prepared always to have a Plan B options. I always found the Hospis nurses & doctors to be the best in giving advice, suggestions and honest sharing of other cases that could comfort our mind & worries during the difficult times. Stay strong & united always and remember I am here too!
November 29, 2017 at 12:26 PM
Jaded Jeremy said…
Twilight Man,
Thank you.
November 30, 2017 at 11:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - character build (Part 1)

-
Here are the character builds for my current run (with the help of Ban): Kyrie Fellblade/Marked Counter: Slow Secondary passives: Execute, Life Font Fellblade itself is a good class because of the various conditions it can inflict and most importantly they can inflict Sleep. Iirc, the only other human class that can do this is Gadgeteer. Their passive Malice increases the chance of landing it by 10%. Fellblade pairs well with Marked because both use ATK and MND in their offensive abilities. Also, Fellblade's abilities are mostly short range whereas Marked has some long range abilities. Execute for more damage. Life Font is for suvivability. Ban opined that with two healers, there's no need for Life Font but I discover that it enables Kyrie to survive just enough for a healer to heal her up, after having received massive damage. Ban advocated for Marked/Fellblade for superior Speed (1.00 vs 0.92) and defense (heavy armor). I resisted this for a long time because I
Read more

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - character build (Part 2)

-
(continue from Part 1 ) Yates Anatomist/Wizard Counter: Cripple Secondary passives: Blessed One, Smart Casting Anatomist is the best healer in game due to the passive Legendary Healer, which also then boost the amount of self-healing by Blessed One. Although Ban thinks Anatomist's Dark spells are sufficient in dealing damage and so he suggests Alchemyst as Yate's secondary class, I choose Wizard for the following reasons: Quite often, demonic creatures have Dark immunity and other creatures have immunity to other elements. So having Dark, Water, Fire, Earth and Thunder spells enable Yates to cast the most suitable spell, especially when the enemies are vulnerable to certain elements. Flexible casting :) Smart Casting is useful so that I don't need to worry much about the positioning of the enemies relative to my other characters when using Mass Healing and the area effect damage spells. As stated in previous post , there "are so many devastating Skill ba
Read more

Strange expectorant

-
Image
An expectorant cough syrup helps you to prevent phlegem from going to your lungs by expelling it via coughing or so I heard from doctors and pharmacists. That's why for cough that's caused by phlegm, it is not advisable to take suppressant cough syrup. Given that's the role, do you expect it to be drowsy? It should be non-drowsy so that you will be actively coughing out the phlegm, right? Not this Unizet expectorant. The doctor told me that it shouldn't be drowsy and yet some of his patients (including me) reported otherwise. I read the detailed information (on the piece of paper typically stuffed inside the box) and nowhere it indicated drowsiness as a side effect. Strange, huh?
Read more