Fort Fraser update

Hello all,

In an earlier post Kathy wrote "one step forward, two steps back". Oh my how tired I'm getting of living like this. Last night Dolores took me into emergency at St. Johns Hospitalin Vanderhoof. For the past several days my throat has been sore and eating was becoming more and more difficult. Things that I could eat the day before yesterday I couldn't eat yesterday because my throat felt like it was on fire. Even drinking water hurts. Swallowing has become painful again like it was when I was in the midst of the radiation treatments.

Well, Nurse Dolores did an oral examination and found that the roof of my mouth is covered in white blotches and she suspected that I had a fungal infection of some sort. Off we go at 9:15 to "E-merg". Surprise, surprise. No one there except me. The on call Doctor is trained in Oncology and she agrees that I may have a fungal/bacterial infection in my mouth and throat area and she put me on Nilstatin to fight what ever it is that's bothering me. She also took a "swab" from the infected area and sent it to the lab.

We'll probably hear something on Wednesday. In the meantime, I've doubled the amount of my tube feeds and I try to eat as much as I can. Brock would feel right at home with this current development and he will understand my frustration. There have been many untoward developments like this in my recovery process. The Doctor thinks this infection, or what ever it is, is a result of the radiation traeatments. I ask myself, how long can this go on?

The second piece of bad news is, I'm losing weight again. I lost almost 1 full kilo from Wednesday afternoon until last night.. Both Dolores and I are concerned. I try to eat but, I can only tolerate so much pain. I am back on "Hydromorphone" which I am unhappy about and I am still wearing the 25 mcg per hour Fentanyl patch. I tried earlier this week to reduce the patch strength to 12.5 mcg per hour but, the pain was more than I wanted to put up with. This recent development is simply the latest in a long, long series of set backs.

In two weeks I am scheduled to go to Vancouver for more tests and I am planning on taking the Northern Health bus. At this time, this trip now seems to be somewhat in doubt. I'll have to keep my travel plans and options open.

Time to try to get some food into me. I'll report more as the week progresses.

Bye for now,

Rick