A Few Good Days

We have had a run of a few good days. Faina has had good energy and a lack of pain. The Fentanyl has probably kicked in and she has pretty much stopped taking any of the other options; the morphine, the Percocet and the Roxicet. Not only has the nausea passed, but Faina is wading into eating real food. The hit list: Chinese food, wonton soup in particular and fork fulls off of other people's plates; Russian comfort food, potatoes and pickled herring; and baked apples. All evidence is that there is no blockage in the GI tract.

We met with Dr. Koutrelakos and he was highly encouraging. Faina looks infinitely better than she did a week ago. A second cycle of chemo started today. It was the two hour drip and a carry-out 48 hour chemical pump. For good measure was an anti-nausea drug. Let's see how this goes down. While we are in the "wait and see" mode, Dr. Avital (National Cancer Institute) pretty much said he would not be able to do the procedure he proposed. (A two stage procedure, Cytoreductive surgery plus hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPC). I will leave the details of this for later. For the really curious, here is a "For Dummies" abstract http://www.springerlink.com/content/3320043177940k32/) He referred us to Dr. Esquivel at St. Agnes in Baltimore. This surgeon is interested in meeting with us. For now we will continue with the chemo and check that for effectiveness. Dr. K holds Dr. E in high regard so even he was encouraging that risky, radical option.

Today I got a glimpse of how much pain Faina can tolerate. It was heroic. The last two times she had the paracentesis (draining fluid from her abdominal cavity) I was sent to the waiting room. This time I was allowed to stay with her. The doctor used a sonogram to locate the fluid, a dark area on the monitor. He proceeded to use two anaesthetic injections to the abdomen (Faina nearly crushed my hand with those), then inserted a tube which then was attached to a bottle and the peritoneal fluid flowed like a mighty stream, about two-thirds of a liter. Heading to the car, Faina was telling me that she tolerates the pain because she is going to live. We took the scenic route home.