The Day We Ventured Outside

Monday morning brought delays to both Joe's radiation treatment and his chemo.  However, the chemo delay was of his own making...I'll explain the chemo later.  Last evening Joe called the Inclement Weather line at the Duke Radiology Clinic and learned that they would not be opening at 7am as usual and for all persons with appointments to wait to hear from the clinic before coming in for treatment due to the weekend snow.

So that is just what he did.  He received the call about 9am this morning and they wanted him to come in right then if possible.  Of course he could and he did.  He had to wait about 30 mins for his treatment to begin, but 1/2 hour is not a bad wait, all things considered.  However, the one thing he forgot was to take his morning chemo pills.  He did take the pills soon after returning home, around 11:30am.  Therein lies the problem.  The pills have to be taken 12 hours apart (12 hours is best, but they can be taken between 10-12 hours apart), 30 minutes after eating on days that he has radiation treatment.  What does this mean you ask....it means he is going to be up really late tonight and eating really late, thus most likely ending up with indigestion when he goes to bad.  Not a good thing!  Our solution is to shave a little off the 12 hours for the next 3 days until we get it back down to his usual 7am and 7pm.  How does one forget to take your chemo when it has been drilled into you over and over and over??????.....most likely due to Joe having some movie musical playing in his head and not paying attention (my theory, not proven, but most likely accurate). ****Joe has just informed me that I should say that the reason is because he wanted to make sure he was having the radiation treatment before taking the chemo pills.*** (That doesn't explain why the pills were not taken until 11:30am)  Not a catastrophe, but not the best scenario for the next couple of days.  Joe also had blood drawn today for more analysis, but just informed me that they didn't take enough this morning and will have to take more tomorrow.  He feels good, his energy is good and except for the occassional "cat-nap", goes about his daily normal routine.  Hopefully there won't be anymore treatment delays or pill miscues this week and the normal routine we have developed will resume very soon.