Wednesday was a little disappointing. Nothing to worry about though. I started the fourth treatment and my blood work is all still looking good as are my vitals. I did lose a little weight in the last 2 weeks, but that is not necessarily bad, I am eating a little healthier and there were a couple of days where I got wrapped up in some work and didn’t eat as much as I should have, but there is no loss of apatite, just distraction.
The disappointment came from not having the CT scan results available yet. I had a meeting with the Oncologist specifically to discuss those results, so not having them made the meeting mostly redundant from the one two weeks ago. She was able to comment that the blood marker shows signs of improvement, so that in itself is a weak indicator that the chemotherapy is working; however, I am really interested in seeing if the CT scans will show some progress on the colony that started on the Liver which she agreed was probably the most likely place to see improvement at this phase of the treatment due to the relative sizes of the other tumors in comparison.
I left the treatment a little unhappy about the lack of CT scan results but had a discussion with the doctors medical assistant (MA) and asked to have the doctor call me once she gets to review the scans to update me then. I don’t need to see the scans myself and likely would not be able to see anything that was not pointed out to me, but her assessment will give me the information that I am looking for.
On the ostomy barrier saga, I removed, showered and replaced the convex barrier Wednesday morning, making it a four day stint for that one. My inspection of the removed device tells me that I should have replaced it after three days since the stomach enzymes had started making some progress on eating through the barrier seal, not a leak to the outside but there was definitely some leakage on the inner ring of the donut shaped seal. That was evident by the irritation to the skin at that location. I plan to replace the current one after three days and hope to not see any signs of it failing. I did finally receive three convex barriers from Hollister to try so will use one of those on the next change. in the meantime I had ordered and received a set of 10 of the Coloplast barriers and pouches, so I should be set for at least a month now if these all continue the three day survival trend.