January 27, 2003: Health Update

Hi friends. I've received many, many notes lately asking for an update, so here goes, short and to the point.

I started Thalidomide two weeks ago, and by tomorrow will have eased myself up to full dosage. So far, at least, there's been little to report in the way of side effects, but we need to give it a while in my system to know for sure. (It does make one tired, but that's not really a side effect, since it was designed in the 50s as a sedative.) It will take a while, as well, to see if is doing any good--my oncologist wants to monitor my protein counts every 60 days and my next test will be early in February.

In the meanwhile, I'm trying to be as normal as possible. The pain remains episodic and is, on the whole, mostly just annoying and rarely if ever debilitating. I've managed to avoid the big pain killers like percoset and the morphine patch so far, and am managing with lots of advil and 222s, as well as a codependency with my heating pad. Emotionally, things have evened out in the past few weeks. The hard part, honestly, was the waiting--those three weeks between being rediagnosed and their final decision about course of action were murder. Now, at least, I can just deal with the lay of the land and stay busy. I seem to have plenty of work right now--several bits of record company writing, some interesting and promising work with Habitat, World Vision Canada and Visionledd, some other bits and pieces of other stuff as well.... after a leanish December, some billable hours are critical right now, so feeling well enough to work is a real blessing.

We had an amazing (but blurry) weekend last week when we drove to Canada for a surprise 70th birthday party for my mom. 150 people gathered to pay tribute to her and to watch her nearly have a stroke at the site of them lying in wait for her.

Well, I promised short, so that's that.

Thanks for your prayers, and remember those who are born, live and die alone.

Dwight

E-mail Dwight | Back to Cancer Journal Index Page