Day #15

AS happy as I was over the weekend, after today's session I experienced all kinds of problems. Right after it was over I felt sharp jabs just above the pubic bone area, lasting for about an hour. I was very gassy all day, and I had unusually many moments of weakness. Not just tiredness, it was more like being close to fainting, even while I was sitting in an armchair.

I thought my technique is good enough to make me sail through the whole five weeks feeling perfectly fine, as if I did not even get radiation. My body says otherwise. Now I face the rest of the treatment with a certain degree of dread. So let's see how things will unfold in the next days...

Weekend #3

I must confess I start wondering whether all the symptoms described in those documents all are produced by the enteritis. And now, since I solved that problem, I hardly have any symptoms. It is awfully late now, I will continue this blog entry tomorrow, but i intend to summarize here the technique of not getting your intestines get irradiated and thus not develop the symptoms.

Day #14

Had a very tiring but good day. Our younger son had his birthday today and I cooked and baked, with only the occasional tiredness spell. Absolutely no sign of gastro-enteritis. I only feel a rumbling low level pain around the pelvic floor, similar to a period.

Day #13

My bumps got itchy again today. I also get the waves of weakness more often. And both yesterday and today I had bouts of palpitation. Not bad, if I lie down right away it stops in a minute or so. But it is a sign that my system is generally getting over taxed.

Day #12

Still no diarrhea... But my bladder is obviously starting to get affected. I feel pain when voiding, and I have to go more often than usual. Otherwise I am still functioning quite well, doing all the household chores, going shopping, etc. What I noticed already during the first week was that about two hours after the session the inflammation sets in and I feel quite off for the next couple of hours. Therefore I requested to have the sessions really early. I have them anywhere between 7:30 and 9:00. But this way the reaction is over and done with by lunchtime and I am relatively alright for the rest of the day.

Day #11

Today I had an unusually bad urticaria incident. Both my arms and around the collar area on my neck the little bumps that have been lingering ever since my CT scan reaction, have flared up, turned red and made me scratch furiously for several hours. Unfortunately I ran out of Benadryl and, being a kind of anti-medication person, I opted for just riding the attack out.

I have absolutely no idea what causes these flare-ups. I did have a slight sensitivity to wheat, eggplants, chocolate before, which manifested in small bubbles on my fingers (dermatitis herpetiformis), but I keep away from all of these. The bumps now cover a large area on my arms from the elbow down, plus around my neck. And they did not disappear. Even when they are not itchy, I can feel them when I run my fingers along these areas, and if the light shines on my arms at a certain angle, they are actually visible.

If anybody here reading this could shed some light on this lingering problem, I would very much appreciate your input...

Weekend #2

Just as a quick explanation: the dates always show the following day because I only get to my computer after midnight. And this time it was a long weekend, Monday being Simcoe Day here in Toronto.

Anyway... The weekend was a mixed bag. On Saturday I failed to have even one single BM. So, in my wisdom, I had a big bowl of All Bran and two plums before going to bed. Not a good idea! Then again it may have been in combination with a mild stomach flu, because I also had a scratchy throat, but in any case I developed stomach (not in the belly!) cramps and a LOT OF gas, which then resulted in lots of washroom visits involving small balls of soft fecal matter.

Otherwise I feel all right, except for the occasional wave of weakness. But a short lying down takes care of that.