Subject: Lesley Update - 12/13

Lesley's temperature held below 100.0 so we began the chemotherapy on
Thursday.  So far, OK.  Thursday was good, Friday was good.  Saturday
Lesley had some nausea in the late afternoon (about 3:00) but no
vomiting.  Sunday was good, and today (Day 5, last day of taking the
Temodar in this round) is good, so far.  All temperatures taken during
those days were below 100.0 (well, all except for one anomalous reading
which I discarded after retaking her temperature 15 minutes later.  The
visiting nurse (she comes in once a week to check on Lesley) said not to
invite trouble by taking her temperature TOO often.  :-))  Her appetite
and eating are fine.

The pattern seems to be that Lesley has energy in the morning after she
takes some Tylenol and gets something to eat.  After lunch, it's
definitely nap time, with a 1 to 3 hour nap.  At and after dinner she
has some energy to interact with the kids, then it's generally upstairs
and to bed around 8:30.

Aphasia (word finding) is definitely tougher, but we can always work
through it to find the right words.  We talked to the nurse about
getting some speech therapy.  She agreed and will try to arrange it.
Lesley's eyes are bothering her quite a bit (each eye works by itself,
but when you put them together they don't give a focused view); she
wears an eye patch virtually all the time that helps her see fine.  The
doctor claims no patient has ever described the eye symptoms that way -
he doesn't seem too concerned.  We talked with the visiting nurse and
she will talk to the doctor about it.  Depending on what they say, we
may try to see our ophthalmologist.

Lesley is back to the treadmill in the mornings with the doctor's
approval - slowly for about 15 minutes.

So, it's a mixed bag - not unexpected.  She should start to slowly feel
better as the 28 days progress.  It's hard to pin any of the symptoms on
any particular cause.  We've got the chemo, the witches' brew of other
medications (all of which say that headaches and vision problems
SOMETIMES occur in SOME patients), tumor, and maybe internal swelling.

We had friends over to help this weekend (Paul and Margaret Gamelin) who
were wonderful, and Lesley's Dad is here until next Sunday.  Then my
parents will be back to stay through Christmas.  We're getting by.

Oh, for those of you who wondered about the helmet, the neurosurgeon has
seemed to have dropped the helmet thing.  When I asked him when Lesley
should wear it, he asked whether she was playing any contact sports.  I
replied, "You mean other than tackle football?"  He said that he
wouldn't worry about it, that she should just be careful.  I also
consider ice to be a contact sport, so if I ever take her out in that, I
will insist that she wears it.

Dave
--
Dave Baldauf, h/o Lesley, gbm, dx/srg 8/99, rad 9/99, rad completed
10/99, debulk srg 10/99, bone flap removal srg due to infection 11/99,
started Temodar 12/99
mailto:dbaldauf@ultranet.com