30 August 2023
I had a good night’s sleep but I was a total slug when I got out of bed around 7 am. I ate breakfast, had some coffee and managed a semi-solid poop and decided to hell with it and went back to bed. I have several errands to run today, including getting the rest of a prescription filled but most of that may have to wait. I’m really, really dragging today. I don’t know if that’s due to yesterday’s diarrhea or if it is the aftereffects of the Taxol infusion on Monday. Either way, it sucks. Hopefully, this is my nadir for the treatment this week and things will pick up for the rest of the week.
I have an hydration infusion scheduled at 3:30 pm today and I have no idea what that entails. I assume they are going to give me Ringer’s solution (saline with a little glucose) but I don’t know if they will do a blood test first, add magnesium to the package, how long it will take, yada, yada, yada. I suspect this will be a common occurrence two days after every chemo infusion, so I might as well get used to it.
My cousin Jimmie and I have discussed how we often use closed captioning when watching tv, even for shows from America. We decided it was mandatory for shows from England, Australia and New Zealand but lately, I can’t understand Americanese. She mentioned an article she read about how that is a common problem with new tvs. Apparently, the newer tvs are good for picture but not sound with their built in speakers. I read a similar article and the solution seems to be to add a sound bar to your tv.
Consequently, I’ve ordered a sound bar (which came with a woofer) and it should arrive sometime today. Of course, it didn’t come with the necessary cables and I had to order those separate. Next, I’ll have to see if I have enough innate intelligence to hook the thing up. It’s not as simple as plugging in the cables. You have to go into the set up feature of the tv and mute the speaker system on the tv and then have the tv recognize the sound bar. Not sure I’ll be able to handle it with a little chem fog going on. I’ll keep you posted on if I get it to work and if it makes a difference.
I bought my current tv (58″) several years ago because I could never read the chyrons scrolling across the bottom of the screen, particularly on news shows. There’s actually a formula you can use to determine how large a tv screen you need based on the distance you are sitting from the tv. I think based on where my couch is in relation to the tv, I would need something like a 98 inch tv which wasn’t going to happen. I simply went with the larges screen I could afford.
I think back to the days when my parents bought our first tv and it was this little tiny screen. For some reason, my grandparents had a very large tv screen and it was much preferable to watch tv at their house. Of course, the tv station didn’t come on the air until 8 or 9 am and signed off with the national anthem at 10 pm. Considering the quality of some of the tv programs now days, that might be a good time frame to go back to.
As it happens, the sound bar and woofer arrived before my infusion appointment and I was able to install it and get it working. I’ll check it out tonight to see if I can hear the words better than with just the tv audio.
I left the house around 2:30 pm for the 3:30 pm hydration infusion. I was ushered back around 3:30 and Casey was my nurse. I had met her before on Monday when I accidentally pulled the needle out of the port. I promised to do better today.
They checked my blood and found my magnesium level low again (1.7 – normal is 1.9-2.7). For the CBC with auto differential, I was low in red blood cells, hemoglobin, hematocrit, lymphocytes absolute, and lymphocytes relative. My neutrophils were high. For the comprehensive metabolic panel, my glucose was high (123) as was my SGOT and SGPT (liver enzymes).
Casey couldn’t believe I had eleven episodes of diarrhea from 4:30 am on the 29th until today. I do have to admit the hydration solution is making me feel much better. I don’t feel so much like a slug now.
The real problem right now is I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I need to stop at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription but they close at 6 and it’s 5:25 pm now and I have at least another 30 minutes to go on the hydration infusion. I’ll probably stop somewhere for some fast food on the way home.
Tomorrow is my checkup with Dr. Burgers. Stay tuned!
