So as normal the hands and feet are getting more normal. The stiffness in my fingers has abated and my feet for the most part are fine again. The left leg is still a bit stiff, sore and weak, which when I did a little google searching is a possible side effect of chemotherapy so I will accept it as that for now and hope to see it continue to improve. Mainly it feels like I just rode 100 miles on it and didn’t cool down properly.
Today was otherwise a pretty normal Sunday. I made it to Peet’s for my afternoon Cappuccino and reading, then back home. I hope to vacuum in the morning since I just didn’t have the energy today to drag the machine around.
Isabella is happy that I don’t have the pump on. She gets very needy when I am sporting it and without it she seems to be more accepting of my condition.
On the barrier front, the Hollister convex barrier seems to be holding up fine, but all in all I think that I prefer the Coloplast one. Probably because the Coloplast one looks nicer since the pouch is covered and the barrier presents a much smaller footprint on my skin but still lasts the 3 days expected. Either way, I am just happy that I seem to have figured out and solved my failure problem. Maybe this will be my last mention of that particular aspect of my life now.
Today I would have been flying to Portland OR to attend the Embedded Linux Conference. It popped up on my calendar and that was probably my first reminder. It made me a little bit sad that I was not going but I fully intend to make it next year. My next scheduled event was a trip to Hawaii in May that I also canceled. The moral of this story is that the time to do a thing is when you first want to. I put off both of these things for a few years now and although all indications are that I should be able to do them next year, I could not have been sure of that two months ago.
One more thing for you my dear readers. A friend of mine mentioned that because of what I am going through, he was going to finally get a colonoscopy. He was considering instead of doing the stool sample test which is obviously less invasive. My advice to him is the same as I will share with you. I did the stool sample test and it came back negative. At the same time I had a tumor large enough to block most of my transverse colon. That test is only able to detect cancer if the tumor is bleeding at the time that the sample(s) are taken. In my case it was not bleeding at that time so the test found nothing. As invasive as the colonoscopy can be, it has more than one purpose. In addition to finding any cancerous growths, the doctor while performing it can remove polyps that are seen that may currently be benign. The prep is annoying, but if you are 50 years old or older and have not had this procedure done, I strongly urge you to do so.