April 14

Hi,

It seems odd to be writing at this time of day (10:00 a.m.) I am somewhat of a night owl and usually do this toward the end of my day. But, we are on vacation this week, with no place to go except to doctor appointments, and writing beats ironing any day of the week, so here's the latest update.

It seems that now Denny has a combination of both types of pain--post herpetic neuralgia and trigeminal neuralgia. That's the latest conclusion since the horrible sharp pains are gone but for the last two days he has a very sensitve reaction and a constant moderate pain across his face and into his head on the left side. That points back to the post-shingles pain and he has been completely weaned from that drug. We saw Drs. Meena and Richter yesterday and everyone is a bit baffled. New meds have been ordered and we will try to get this managed.

Let's add to everything the slight, loose cough that Den's had for about four days.
An X-ray showed that he has "early-evolving" pneumonia. More antiobiotics. Then tomorrow he will begin his sixth round of chemotherapy. He usually has no adverse reaction to that, so since it has been delayed so long we are both glad to get that underway, hoping that the tumor hasn't changed since the last MRI.

All in all, I'm glad that this is all happening while I am here full time with him.
I don't go back to work until next Tuesday, so by then things should be better. Dr. Richter is also investigating other reasons for Denny's chronic fatigue. I believe an answer to that could lead to resolving some of the other issues. I've been conveniently blaming the steroids for everything, but Jim doesn't think they are the source. I will personally make him his own set of angel wings if he can get to the bottom of the fatigue/sleeping issue. (Those of you who know me well realize that those wings will be made with a hot glue gun, but hey, wings are wings!)

I'll check in again by the end of the week. Now I will go look for another excuse not to iron.

Love,
Carla