Day + 29

I GAINED TWO POUNDS! Sorry for yelling but in my current condition, 2 pounds is huge and I'll take it. Greetings from the new beach pad, and a great new pad it is. On one side we have the bay with a bunch of boat docked on moorings right off the shore. Right across the bay there is a big hotel which you can hear music from on weekend nights, or at least that's where we think it's coming from. About 4 blocks directly behind us is the ocean. Our place is positioned right on the end of the Mission bay peninsula so we’re perfectly placed for both bay and ocean. It really is a perfect spot to get well and I am loving it more and more every day. Evey and I go on walks just about every day ranging from 1-3 miles so we have done a good amount of exploring so far. Just the other morning we were walking along the ocean side and saw a bunch of dolphins sharing waves with the surfers. I had to sit down on the bench for 5 minutes just to soak it in. It was an unreal feeling just knowing that this is where I’ll be living for the next 6 months. The only thing missing is Floyd, but he has visitation rights so we’ll be seeing him occasionally.

So again, I gained 2 pounds which is huge considering I am right now about 30 pounds underweight. My last hospital visit really took it out of me for some reason. I guess it could have something to do with the chemo/radiation combo combined with the fact that I had a new immune system introduced to my body. I need to keep reminding myself of that. Anyway, I am way underweight right now and my goal now is to put it back on as quickly as possible. My clothes don’t fit anymore and I feel like I look someone out of a prison camp. I feel like one of those skinny African kids on a charity infomercial, asking for someone to “adopt” me for the cost of a cup of coffee a day. You get the picture. I’m pretty optimistic I’ll put it back in pretty quickly, but I have a couple issues I need to battle through. The first is the bad nausea that hit me when I got discharged. I had it really bad for the first 10 days or so and it has seemed to pull back a bit this week, but it still comes and goes. Nausea just makes everything look and taste horrible, no matter how hungry you are. The other issue is my taste buds, or lack there of. The last round of chemo and radiation completely fried my taste buds so foods not only taste different, but they taste bad. Everything has a weird tinge that makes all food, no matter how much you love it, taste off. And after a couple of days of that, you just don’t want to eat at all. Luckily my taste buds have finally started to come back around this week. The doctor said it could take as long as 6 weeks so I am hoping they are here to stay and not just flashing in and out. We’ll see. So once I get past these two issues, which I already kind of am, I should be back on track to put this weight back on.

As far as the rest of my health goes, all is good. I feel much better than last week and my blood counts are still very good. White blood cells are at 3,600, Hemoglobin is at 10.6, Hematocrit is at 31.9 and platelets at 119,000. All are doing great but my platelet count seems to be dropping a bit. They are still in great shape but slowly going down…no problem at all. My walks are getting better and better and I feel like I’m getting more energy with every day that passes. It will be a while before I can back into a good exercise program, but walking for now is doing wonders.

That’s it for now everyone. All is well and will keep getting better as the days go on. Take care, be well and thanks for reading.