First, the good news: the radiation treatments appear to be working.  Next, the bad news:  Maggie’s been running a fever and feels horrible.  Side effect of the radiation?  Nope.  But we’ve got blood cultures cookin’, antibiotics workin’, and more radiation coming on Monday.

Maggie told me this morning that she thinks the radiation is helping with the pain.  That was a pretty good way to start the day.  We had our second treatment this morning at 9AM.  The nice ladies at the center gave me a very good show of what they do, how it works, and how they keep it accurate and “safe.”  Fascinating stuff, really.  I’ll fill in more details about it later for those inquiring minds.

This afternoon, before our next scheduled treatment, Maggie developed a fever of 101.8.  Maggie had also run of fever last night so we had asked about related radiation side-effects but it’s pretty conclusive that radiation doesn’t cause fevers.  So, off to The Spa we went after our radiation to get blood drawn.  Since the concern is about infections, they started cultures.  Cultures, according to the pesky laws of the universe, take about three days to get results.  Meanwhile, they gave us some antibiotics just in case.

Maggie has also been very tired today.  She’d definitely spent more time in bed than out.  This evening she’s also had on and off sweats.  Grumble.  Maybe she just caught a cold.  Crappy timing.

Lori has come over to help us get some basic chores around the house done, like laundry.  I’m rediculously happy about it because I’ve been wearing dirty clothes now for days.  We spend so much time dealing with all the little health details that the other things are just falling through the cracks.  Insurance this, social security that, doctor’s calls, clinical trial calls, medical records, blah, blah, blah.  Then add in the trips to The Spa and/or the trips to the radiation clinic and, geesh, it’s a beat-down.

It has been such a long day for such a short blog entry.  I can’t believe how tired I am.  It really feels like we were just going all day long.  But supper’s cookin’.  And, happily,  Maggie’s pain is reducing.  The radiation is working.  And we’ve got our clinical trial consults coming up next week.