Jerry's January 23 update

Hey Jerry!
It is wonderful to hear from you - we think about you everyday! Don is about two weeks behind you and he's doing pretty good - haven't reached the burning point (and I'm hoping he doesn't experience that).

So glad you are doing fairly well - the surgery will be a huge milestone and we are gonna be watching for news from you all the time. Does your wife post at all on here so we can get updates on you as you go through the surgery stage?

If you don't get the marinol script soon enough - find someone who tokes and take it from there - anything beats the burn, pain, and nausea. If you don't want to smoke it - read up on how to make butter with weed and then bake some cookies or use the butter in a food you can eat - you'll get the same effect. I would not make brownies with it - because that may be a little harsh to swallow - but the butter would be fine and the smoke is way better than that.

Hugs,
Judy

jgwright said:

Various and sundry...
I'm not sure if it is a PET/CT scan or just the CT scan. As to food, it doesn't taste metallic. There are chemicals in most processed food, and I seem to be sensitive to some of them now. I can even smell them.

Peaches and greek (more protein) yogurt are edible. Jello too. Mushrooms.

The marinol will be showing up tomorrow. Spendy stuff. Even with my insurance paying for part of it, it is $175.00 Of course, this is a new year and so I have a $100 copay to start with, which means it's really "only" $75.00. And as for why?

Nausea. I was trying to eat some oatmeal this morning. Three small bites. Okay. Next bite... Rush for the bathroom. Not because it hurt, but because of overwhelming nausea that continued well after everything was gone.

--Jerry

Marinol, Marijuana
I talked with Don's radiologist this morning regarding his thoughts on marijuana. He said he does not prescribe it but has no objection to use. He said it will do three things:
1. Stop nausea 2. Increase appetite and 3. Calm a person down. He also said like with any drug - it may not work the same for everyone but in general those are the benefits.

He said that at this point they just don't want the patient losing weight and anything that helps is fine with them. He said there are a lot of drugs for different things and they can prescribe those as needed but he is fine with the fact that if Don wants to smoke weed - go ahead and try it. They will prescribe marinol if wanted and needed. So far the ativan is working for Don - but like I said before, if and when he feels he would benefit from marijuana - we are definately good with at least trying it (I already know I like it!)

The radiation doc said it is also normal to begin to eat better at three weeks after radiation because likely the tumor is shrinking and then at about week 5 - the burning begins to kick in and sensation of hot and cold are noticeable. He said it's like a very bad sunburn only on the inside of you and just like when your skin gets badly sunburned - a hot bath hurts as well as an ice cube is extremely cold and causes shivers. Makes sense to me and again he stressed that not everyone has these experiences but it can be normal.

Their main concern is to get rid of the cancer and have the patient maintain or gain some weight at every possible opportunity because surgery takes a lot out of you and naturally there will be some weight loss for a period of time after that.

Hopefully, Jerry - your symptoms will be gone in a week or two and you can begin to eat again and get 'stocked' up before surgery. Keep on keeping on - we're all behind you !

Judy