The episode of nausea last night seems to trace its source to the fact that Susan cut up some lemons, squeezed some juice out, and then consumed about a tablespoon of the juice. For some reason she craves lemon juice. Given how it affected her, however, I think she’s going to put that on the back burner. Today she’s felt much better, and we had no trouble getting to Houston right on schedule. (Thanks again Judy!) Southwest had wheelchairs (or electric carts) all the way for us, and we found another immediately upon entering MDA, so the impact of the trip on Susan’s energy level was much less than last week.
Tonight she will get blood work here in the hotel (MDA likes to make it easy), and get a good night’s sleep before chemo number 3 tomorrow at 8 AM sharp. We hope to have a consult with a nutritionist during chemo. What seems to be working best for her is home-mashed potatoes, pureed, and topped with finely-shredded cheddar cheese. She also now has 27 boxes of a 300 calorie drink called Enlive. Between the Enlive and the potatoes (which are even better than rice in terms of calories per unit volume), we are hoping she is holding her own nutritionally. The weekly weigh-in tomorrow should give us insight into how it’s going. One other positive indicator is the fact that Susan is able to control her pain pretty much totally using Tylenol, without resorting to vicodin. This is doubly good, since it may indicate the TLK is working, and vicodin tends to slow down the digestive system.
Posted by John Dishman at March 4, 2003 05:03 PM