Juan began his chemo-radiation combination therapy in late June, and had to drive into the city every weekday morning for a 20-minute appointment.
Once again, the chemo drug reared its angry head and at one point left Juan's feet in so much pain that he was barely able to walk from one room to another. But as usual, as soon as the nurses knew about his side effects immediate action was taken. He was pulled off the chemo portion of the treatment just 3 days early and each day thereafter Juan saw a huge reduction in pain.
Despite the foot pain, Juan remained very lucky in his lack of nausea. The radiologist had been almost sure that he would experience nausea since the radiation was directly targeting his stomach, but fortunately his prediction never played out. Although Juan completed his radiation on August 3rd, the exhaustion that almost always accompanies radiation has now arrived. Juan must spend much of his time resting, and generally finds it most helpful to take many smaller naps throughout the day to keep his energy up.
The next major step in treatment is surgery, scheduled for the 3rd of September. We (and the surgeon) are still largely ignorant of exactly what will take place during the surgery. Everything seems to be phrased in the sort of "if this, then that". We (again, surgeon included) still do not know whether the pancreas has been involved. If so, the surgeon will try to remove as much of the tumor as possible to extend life. If not, then the surgeon will remove the entirety of the tumor and leave Juan without a stomach. Although loss of one's entire stomach seems pretty extreme, it turns out our bodies are actually quite capable of living without one. He will effectively undergo gastric bypass; and people willingly do that for much "smaller" reasons than cancer. Juan will have to take smaller meals and eat more often; almost no food is off-limits, he just won't be able to stuff himself with a Shari's Country Fried Steak platter any more. But in truth, none of us should do that anyway. :)
