Holiday

According to the Colon Cancer Alliance, today is World Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Day. I feel like this must be a new thing. Unfortunately when I went to their website and clicked on the Learn More button, I got an error message. So I am going to celebrate by resting... after finishing my week of chemo pills last night.

No complaints

• Blood work and treatment at Siteman West County

I didn't understand the whole story exactly (even as I listened to it being told to multiple other people), but the pharmacy at West County can't prepare chemo right now. So as patient orders are approved, they are faxed to Big Barnes and then a courier drives the drugs out to West County. Seriously. All day long. And today was something like Day 8 of this process.

One of my nurses suggested that she was going to charge me extra for the long nap I got.

My vitals, blood work and protein urine test all looked okay today, so that's good. And I'm home before lunchtime, so I really can't complain.

Flying high

I had a really good weekend. The weather was nearly perfect and we were able to do a lot of things outside. After the failed liver surgery in May, I had real doubts about being able to do any of the active things that I love again. So being outside with Hector and our friends over the weekend really lifted my spirits. Now I'm just going to need a few days to recover, but it was all worth it.

Like watching paint dry

• Bloodwork, appointment with Dr. T and treatment at Siteman South County

"The good news is that you can still get treatment today."

Dang, no window seats left.

Since proteinuria (an elevated level of protein in urine that can be a sign of kidney troubles) is a possible side effect of Avastin, they always test my urine before every treatment of Avastin. And today, my protein level was elevated. So I "get" (this is the bad news) to do a 24 hour urine test to possibly get some additional information about what is going on.

The Avastin website gives a lot of information about side effects... but it's a lot of information to try and sort through. http://www.avastin-hcp.com/about-avastin/safety#important_safety_information Here's the section just on proteinuria.