What a great weekend we’ve had! Maggie was feeling great all weekend long! Friday we went out for a very nice super, just the two of us. Saturday Maggie actually went shopping by herself, driving around Austin from mall to mall. 🙂 She didn’t even take a nap all weekend. Saturday evening we ate supper with Christa and Craig, two wonderful people we had met through The Spa (they’ve had some similar experiences as us). We had so much fun that supper lasted nearly 3 ½ hours! Fantastic! We really did have a great weekend.
Maggie has been exercising lightly. She’s been doing daily pushups, dips, knee bends and (gasp!) sit ups! Yeah, a little more than a month ago they had sliced open her stomach but she’s doing sit ups (although she confessed to Chris that she may have over extended herself a little with the crunches.) Slowly she’s regaining her strength which just helps in every other way. I’d say it helps her confidence but I don’t think she ever lost that.
Monday’s Spa visit was uneventful. We got an increased dose of CPT-11 and an increased dose of Xeloda (4 pills twice a day). Dr. Loukas said that she’s definitely getting an aggressive dose. 385 mg of CPT-11 and 2,000 mg of Xeloda. Chris hasn’t found any online references that help him learn about the typical ranges of those meds so he can’t comment on the aggressiveness. But if someone knows please let him know and he’ll report the information on this web site.
Dr. Loukas seemed pleased with her progress but continues to show caution both with regards to her future outlook and her susceptibility to chemo side effects. He seemed to be confident that Maggie will eventually experience what he called “violent” diarrhea that will undoubtedly put her back into the hospital for a few days. But for now he will continue to raise her chemo dosages to find that magical line between killing her and killing the cancer. It’s clear that Maggie’s strength continues to surprise Dr. Loukas. Chris told him a long time ago not to underestimate Maggie. She’ll reach up and pop you in the nose if you’re not careful. 😉
This morning was good, too. No real nausea to speak of. Chris got up early to give her the anti-nausea pill so we don’t know if the pill is working or she’s just not having nausea. Either way, it’s been a fine morning. Tonight she gets the $6,900 shot of Neulasta again which will bring on the flu-like symptoms on Weds and Thursday. At least this time we know what to expect…. We think.
Her weight seems to be pretty stabilized at around 109 lbs. She’s also begun to loose more of her hair. At this point it’s just no big deal because there’s just not a whole lot of it left to loose. It appears that the eyebrows are starting to drop out, too. Maggie’s not so happy about that. “A person with eyebrows just looks like they’ve got something wrong” she says. 🙁 Chris told her he’d shave his eyebrows so people will think that it just runs in the family.