The Downward Slide....

Guest Post By Leslie

Robin asked me to write her blog post today, as her body has finally succumbed to the strain of all the radiation and chemotherapy she’s been receiving over the past five and a half weeks.

Over the weekend she started getting chills—bone-deep, she reported, that wasn’t helped by having the heat on or wearing warm clothing (though we have been keeping the house nice and toasty, and she has been wearing slippers and a sweatshirt).

Normally in such a case Robin would take a bath to warm up, but unfortunately, having the warm water on her stomach has been making her feel nauseated. So yesterday she tried the warm-the-feet-to-warm-the-whole-body trick, sitting with her feet in hot water in front of the gas fire in the living room:

This did help, but didn’t solve the problem, and she had to get up in the middle of the night to soak her feet again. (Note that I, on the other hand, was throwing the covers off me last night. So it’s her body, not the weather.)

In addition, she’s been fighting a battle with thickened saliva/mucous, which is also making her unhappy. (Robin’s planning to dedicate an entire subsequent post to this lovely subject.)

Finally, the fatigue has now really set in. She’s been spending most of her days in bed, working on her laptop, reading magazines, sleeping and watching DVDs (Thanks Sandy, for the ones you loaned us! We’ve been watching Boston Legal in bed every night.).

So today after Robin’s radiation treatment, we drove over to talk to her oncologist (or should I say, her secondary one—the adorable Dr. Yen—whom we’ve seen on several occasions when Dr. McMullen has been gone). Robin knew she was supposed to call “immediately” if she started suffering from chills, but she really didn't want to bother them over the weekend.  (They are closed Monday.)  Plus, it had gotten significantly worse Monday evening.

She was also suppose to call if her temperature was above 100.5, but we didn’t have a thermometer because ours is trapped—like most of our belongings—at Miramar.  And we are cheap.  We are loathe
to duplicate items we will get back very soon. Silly us.  (We bought one today.)  She had a 102.5° temperature, and lower-than-normal blood pressure. (But her red and white blood cell counts were both good.)

Dr. Yen said that often in this situation he would send the patient directly to the hospital, but in her case (he said, sizing her up), she looked pretty good. So he was sending her home with a prescription for antibiotics to battle the infection that was no doubt causing the fever and chills. He also ordered a blood panel to be taken, part of which will be cultured to try to see what sort of bacteria is the culprit.

Robin’s in bed sleeping. I’ve been trying to make sure she keeps eating enough, because all the chills, mucous and fatigue have been killing her appetite. She has an appointment again tomorrow with her (regular) oncologist.  And, she sees her radiologist Thursday. So don’t worry; she’s in good hands.