Monday July 28: It has been one week since Nick\u2019s final radiation treatment. On July 21, \u00a0the day of his last\u00a0treatment,\u00a0he was diagnosed\u00a0with thrush again. \u00a0I had it once more\u00a0on the following day. Thrush causes a sore throat, mouth, and lips, which neither of us needs, especially Nick!<\/p>\n
Nick\u2019s dismissal sheet from radiation says that \u201cskin reactions may continue to worsen for one week to ten days following the completion of treatments.\u201d During the past week Nick had to take pain pills because of his neck. When you were a child, did your skin peel after a\u00a0sunburn? Well, chunks of the skin on \u00a0Nick\u2019s neck are falling off, and\u00a0the next layer of\u00a0skin underneath is \u00a0very red and tender. It hurts with each neck movement. He has creams and ointments for this, but \u00a0applying them causes more pain. He just went to the hospital to pick up a prescription for more pain pills.<\/p>\n
This week Nick\u00a0was\u00a0able to eat creamed soup, pudding, \u00a0yogurt, a few Cheerios<\/em>, and of course, to drink Boost<\/em> and Boost<\/em> shakes. I suggested that he write down his daily caloric intake and try to increase it \u00a0 each day.<\/p>\n Good news: we drove\u00a0 five miles to the beach on two evenings to enjoy the sunsets. Nick is not allowed in the sun yet, so we can\u2019t go in the daytime. On one of\u00a0the evenings we sat on a bench dedicated to the daughter of my oncologist from twenty-five years ago, Dr. C.; his daughter\u00a0passed away in 2000. Also, we drove to Nick\u2019s \u00a0plot in the town Community Garden (three miles away) to weed \u00a0and to water with the help of \u00a0my friend Judy. Knowing that he would not be able to give seedlings the TLC that they need, Nick reduced the amount of his plantings\u00a0drastically this year. They are far behind those of the other gardeners, but perhaps\u00a0he will be able to eat a homegrown tomato if they are ready late in the season.<\/p>\n Today Nick had a check-up with his internist, whose opinion is that Nick is progressing\u00a0well considering what he has been through. And considering what he has been through, \u00a0 it makes sense that \u00a0he’ll need time to recover.\u00a0Hopefully we’ll see more progress in the coming week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday July 28: It has been one week since Nick\u2019s final radiation treatment. On July 21, \u00a0the day of his last\u00a0treatment,\u00a0he was diagnosed\u00a0with thrush again. \u00a0I had it once more\u00a0on the following day. Thrush causes a sore throat, mouth, and lips, which neither of us needs, especially Nick!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nicks-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}