4/7/24 Might Develop Some Empathy?

     I know I'm a fat ass, but still, I have been lucky enough to walk around feeling well, most of the time.  I know I could be better, but as much as I may try, I don't think I'll ever walk around at a "perfect 180 pounds" as the medical books seem to think that's what healthy men should weigh.  Before the whole cancer thing, I hadn't gone to a doctor in maybe five years, and that is because I feel good most of the time.  Even without monitoring it, my blood pressure was a decent 133/86, starting to climb, but not in the category of needing medicine or even cutting my weight to control it, but it would help, I know.

    Just this past week, with all the changes the chemo drug has been doing to my body, I can see how some people are just miserable all the time.  I am not letting it get me down, I still believe as they told me, for every negative side effect, they have something to counter it, I just have to be positive and continue working.  Cutting out too much sodium had me feeling like I was going to cramp up every time I moved outside of my comfort zone, from stretching my legs, to stretching around to wipe my butt.  One muscle group or another does not work well when it is not supplied the nutrients it needs.  I drove as passenger with Wife last night to go pick up Mijo in Georgetown and the whole way I was in discomfort, my back was tight, I couldn't really reach around for fear of an arm cramp, and even after we picked him up, we tried eating at a restaurant up there and getting off, I just felt like I had a backpack on with 500 pounds in it.  I was not feeling up for anything.  Luckily, the wait was going to be an hour, so we left.  We decided on our old trusty Whataburger and I said F it, I am eating a big boy burger, let the sodium consume me, I just felt bad.  It was great, but even getting home, I lay in bed and felt my lower back flinching as I lay in bed, facing up, our bed has lifting abilities, so I lifted the feet up to give my back a little natural curve, and still I fell asleep kind of tense.

    Now that it is morning (writing this Saturday morning), I feel like a cloud has lifted.  I haven't felt any cramping or tightness and the world just feels better.  I can say the same thing about all the rash I was feeling a few days ago.  My mom just suggested a big dollop of Vaseline and sure enough, by morning my boys downstairs feel almost good as new.  The little ulcer next to my leg scar is also looking like it's drying up, I have been applying hydrocortisone to keep it moist.

    It is sad to figure that some people do live with these "side effects" without being on chemo, because of genetics or bad diets, and I can see that it must suck to be in some people's shoes.  I used to kind of sneer when people say they have fibromyalgia, this from listening to too many episodes of Loveline, and Dr. Drew never seemed to believe the callers when it came to that one.  I'm not saying I have that, but the symptoms are similar.  If these people would maybe adjust their diets, maybe they could find some relief.  Life is so much better when your body is quiet and not constantly calling for attention.

4/6/24 New Side Effects Arriving Daily?

     Just when I think I am doing alright, something new reminds me I am ingesting a chemical that is designed to kill inside the body.  Not to be dramatic, but I am not used to feeling this and that.  I have now started feeling cramps pretty much all over my body.  I noticed it last night, while eating dinner.  I had a small bowl of those bland beans Wife made on Sunday, and every time I lifted the bowl up to my mouth, to avoid spilling them on myself or the carpet, my hand would want to cramp up as I was holding the bowl.  I thought it weird and Wife noticed right away I was fidgeting with my hands.  She thought it was the numbness I felt the first few days, which I said no.  I just shook my hands a few times and they settled down, but something is there.

    It happened again Friday morning, I stretched in bed and my leg locked up and woke me.  I moved back and it sort of let go, but the cramp was there.  I decided to just get up at that point.  Every time that I stretch though, I feel like I could cramp.  In the shower, I was stretching my arm to wash my armpits and again, my whole shoulders felt like they wanted to lock up, I had not felt that sensation, it was not fun, it seemed almost suffocating, but it let go.  It has been like that all day, every time I put my body in a different than normal position, such as reaching under the cabinet at work to get bottles, my stomach area wanted to lock up.

    Because of all this, I am going to go back to eating normally.  I am trying to help keep my blood pressure down, but I am not going to be cramping up like this and accept it.  I have to find a happy medium where I can help the blood pressure pills some, but also not feel like I do.  As soon as I get this back under control, I am sure something else will sprout up to annoy me.  Oh well, if it helps in the long run, I guess sacrifices have to be made.

    I would like to add that we stopped at ole Whataburger when we got back from picking up Mijo, we had not eaten dinner and I was set on eating a burger to try and relieve these cramps I've been getting all over.  I enjoyed a patty melt, but only ate about half the fries.  It was delicious and great, but I waited to look at the sodium content and to find out it was like 1700 mg when I had been trying to consume less than that per day the rest of the week, I was a bit scared to check my blood pressure.  I was then glad to see it hadn't changed drastically before bedtime, still hovering around 134/79 and then 130/91 in the morning, before the blood pressure pill.  I'll be drinking plenty of water to wash that extra sodium out, but at least last night I was not bothered by threats of my body cramping up on me.

4/5/24 New Meals?

     I've never been one to keep a salt shaker at the table, I always thought the flavor of the meat should come through, but apparently, I don't know what I was talking about.  Since actively trying to reduce sodium, I am discovering some foods aren't even interesting to eat.  Wife made a crock pot of beans over the weekend, but without salt, it was like a pasty mulch.  She had her little hunk of pork she usually throws in there, but it is full of sodium and then she did not flavor it as normal, and I could not find enough interest to even finish the bowl I served myself.  I have to say it was the same for the meat we grilled for Easter Sunday.  We had fajitas, chicken and a couple of random small packs of beef with rib bones (Wife went shopping, so she bought different stuff than I would).  Normally, Mijo and I fight over the chunks of fajita meat even before we serve our plates, but this time he even said "if this is what we're eating, I think I'll just stay in the dorms on the weekends."

    Enter Wife and her "Can Do Attitude", she has been mixing different spices to try to make the meals still good enough to eat and she has impressed me twice now.  We had burgers on Tuesday, and she was mixing 4-5 different bottles of spices, but the end result was pretty freaking great, after eating through the lame BBQ meat.  I think it helped that the patties were a little burned, the crispness added to the flavor.  I then ate the patties on one piece of bread at 120 mg of sodium each and one slice of cheddar cheese, another 140 mg of sodium.  So with the two burger patties, I still say I stayed under 800 mg of sodium.  I ate it with a side of salad, if a bunch of spinach leaves counts as a salad.  I noticed I wasn't drained of energy the next day too, which I barely had any energy on Monday and Tuesday, I just wanted to sleep.

    Last night, we ate chicken, it just went from frozen to made crispy in the oven with whatever magic she put on it, but I was worried she had said F it and loaded it with salt, but she said she used that Nusalt, the sodium substitute, and it really added flavor, although she said she had to go heavy handed on it.  A light sprinkle is not enough.  I was worried my blood pressure would show some trickery afoot, but I was pleasantly surprised.  My bp that night was 119/75 and this morning it was 134/81, which is probably better than when I started the chemo drugs.  

    I'm even excited about the sirloin we are trying tonight, who knows, maybe she releases her own low sodium line of spices.  With meat that good, I don't even mind the side of veggies I am now consuming regularly.

4/4/24 It's Gonna Be A Long RIde?

     After a couple days, I thought I had this chemo drug figured out.  My heart rate went super low, fine, blood pressure went up, no problem, I'll take not one but two blood pressure pills to bring it back down to even better than I had it before.  I was not expecting this, but when I went to get an EKG on Monday after the weird heart rate and high blood pressure, the doctor I saw prescribed a second blood pressure pill, he did not like my blood pressure, even in the 140s/90s, which I thought wasn't that bad, considering the chemo drug is known to raise it a bit.  I told the clinical study lady, who talked to my endocrinologist, and she agreed I should take the extra blood pressure pill.  I was hesitant, but after seeing a blood pressure of 119/75, what can I say?

    Other than that, I have already experienced a few days where I just felt drained, I had no strength on Monday and Tuesday, then I woke today and I felt fine, with regard to that.  Tuesday, I was also super gassy at work, I am not sure if that is from the medicine, or a side effect of me eating big bowls of oatmeal and a lot of fruit in the morning.  Either way, I also had a big bowl of oatmeal on Wednesday morning, I find it delicious even if I have never been an oatmeal kind of guy.  I wasn't as gassy on Wednesday, but I still ripped a couple when left alone at work.

    Now a new one I wasn't expecting.  I think my skin is getting super delicate.  I noticed my testicles are both rashy, maybe it's because I've been walking every day on the treadmill, but they feel raw, and that kind of sucks.  Even scarier, my scar on my leg, which I have not had any problems with in the last 6-7 years looks like it hit something and there is a little bleeding/moisture on the skin.  The skin around the scar never really healed, it stayed dark and nasty, so I don't know what it's ability to heal will be, but I am a little worried about it.  The side effects do include possible ulcers in the mouth, so maybe this is some form of that, like I said, to my knowledge, I have not hit the scar, and I do put lotion on it every day to keep skin moist and as healthy as possible.

    So far, every side effect comes and goes, I hope this heals up and goes away, but for now, I know I will have a hard time not worrying about it.  All I can do is keep going, I know this is for a finite time and won't last more than a few months, but man, it still all kind of sucks.

4/3/24 Cougars Are Possibly Increasing at SU?

     I was excited to hear Mijo say that his lineman friend who is graduating from Crockett might be joining him at Southwestern University.  This was Mijo's wrestling sparring partner his Junior and Senior year and they were pretty close since they met when Mijo was a Sophomore at Crockett.  The kid is near the top of his class, last I heard he had around a 4.0gpa, so it should be no problem for him to succeed at the school.  He wants to continue playing football as well, and this would probably be his best shot.  A couple years ago, Mijo was thinking this kid could play at a D1 school possibly, he is 6' 2" and moves very well, but he has been obsessed with losing weight, and is now walking around at less than 200 pounds.  This makes for a very light weight lineman, Mijo right now tips the scale at a beefy 273 pounds and of course, all things being similar, heavier is going to win most of the time when it comes to pushing each other.

    Today was a good day for the kid though.  He went to visit with both his parents who Wife and I like, they always come around and hug us and thank us for Mijo being such a good friend to their son.  They just loved our boy.  He also took the head coach which I thought was a cool move, and Mijo said he went and joined his tour, hanging with them when he was shown a short video showing the schemes they prefer to run and a tour of their facilities.  Cougar coach thought the school was very nice and the place just reminded him of Crockett with its cozy feel.  The kid's parents told the Pirate coaches giving the tour to expect their boy in the fall, they were sold.  It also helps that his mom had told us that two of her sisters had graduated from Southwestern, so the family is a legacy of sorts.

    Mijo has forged his own path and I think it has been great, now that football season is over, he is over there with all the husky linemen boys hanging out in their dorms playing video games.  I think the campus is pretty chill, with only 1900 kids, but if there were to be any trouble, who wants to mess around with the bigger of the football players who seem to be a friendly unit that sticks together with their Thick Man Thursdays at Whataburger and their constant off season workouts?  I like that this is the company he keeps.  This new Cougar kid could fit right in, if he is willing to bulk up a bit, otherwise he might have to think about converting to possibly a defensive end, or maybe a tight end.

    It would be exciting to me anyways that Mijo becomes an anchor and a steady stream of Cougars started following him to SU.  They might not be the best team and I do think they're getting better, but the education will be a good one, and that is the reason people go to college.

4/2/24 Something Seems Afoot?

     I don't know if I tripped something in regards to my treatment, but things have changed.  Over the weekend, I got some higher than what had been normal blood pressure readings, on Friday I measured 171/94 with a heart rate of 60.  I had been more like 140/85, if I had to average the readings from before the drug.  I also noticed heart rates of 46 and 53, Thursday and Friday.  I was worried about this, but my study coordinator lady (I am in a study which allows the chemo drug to be free) was more worried about the higher than normal blood pressure.  I thought about my actions and deduced that the crap I ate Thursday and Friday probably did not help my readings.  I then took to cleaning up my act, sodium wise, and honestly, the last few readings have been much better, the last one being 132/67.

    Because of what happened over the weekend though, my endocrinologist recommended I get an ekg, to make sure my heart is okay.  I then went to Victory Medical, what I am calling my local clinic and got an ekg done today.  It showed that my heart was okay, other than the doctor/PA who talked to me said I had a heart murmur, but they are very common, and medically they are not treated.  My Mom says she has had a heart murmur since childhood, so I guess they run in the family.  This doctor did add another blood pressure pill, since he thought my reading of 144/94 there at the clinic was a tad high, even though I was explaining that the chemo drug was partly to blame.  I thanked him, I figured having something else to combat a rising blood pressure is a good thing, if I need it.  But of course, I was not going to take it unless my endocrinologist agreed with it.  I told them and she said to go ahead and add it in.

    I thought this would be the extent of things, but then I got a call for a cardiovascular consult from up there in MD Anderson.  This kind of scares, are they just being good at their jobs and covering all their bases, or did they notice more from the ekg, and now I need my heart studied better.  He scheduled a visit for April 22, I figure if it was an emergency, it wouldn't have been scheduled for three weeks from now.

    They keep telling me to try and relax and be stress free, but shit like this just kind of scares me.  I was angst-y the rest of the day and felt nausea and generally not well.  It also doesn't help that I am trying to eat healthier, but damn bland food is almost not worth eating, and I have never been one to add more salt while I'm eating or anything, but I do appreciate some flavor profiles to my meat.  We ate the rest of the chicken and fajita meat with a salad tonight.  I'm sure it was great sodium wise, but eh, I didn't even finish my plate.

    I need to talk to my clinic study lady, see if she can give me some piece of mind about the cardiac appointment, hopefully it is just another way MD Anderson is better but right now I am just nervous.

4/1/24 Learning About High Blood Pressure And Diet?

    Saturday was a bit of a rough day, probably because of my actions on Friday.  Wife was off on Friday and I told her to run to the store and get food for the weekend, since I was at work and the plan was to have a relaxing weekend at home while I get through my chemotherapy time (hopefully it'll only be 2-4 months).  When I got home after work, she had just gotten home and the kitchen was fully loaded, tons of fruit, bags of chips on the counters, meat for Sunday, new new cases of sodas, I mean $500 of groceries is a nice pile.  I thought it easy to open a big bag of potato chips and tear in, why not, I've done this before, and I ate a good amount of the bag while talking with Wife about my day and busting balls with Mijo about his mediocre grass cutting efforts outside, all good fun.  Wife made sandwiches of ham and bologna and we added more chips.

    Time passed, I might have taken a quick nap after work, I had gotten out of work around 3:30 pm, and then we were here putzing around while Wife helped Mijo write a paper of some kind I was of course sampling the Easter chocolates by the handful).  We didn't end up leaving the house until after 7:00 pm, we took Mijo to San Marcos, he was going to go spend the night at his friend's apartment as it was one of their birthdays.  We came back, and then ate some sandwiches of tuna which Wife made earlier, it was supposed to be salmon patties, and the tuna was for Mijo who doesn't like salmon, but since it was late and he left, we ate the tuna.  Again, more potato chips were included, and since the bag was empty, I switched to tortilla chips, and just used the tuna as dipping material to change it from boring sandwiches.  I am taking my chemo drug around 7:00 pm, I like it better in the evening when I am going to be home, in case anything weird happens, I am not at work.  Because of the medicine, I am supposed to track my blood pressure at least twice a day.  I have become obsessed with the blood pressure monitor, as I tend to do with new things.

    After eating all that salty stuff and the chemo drugs, I should not have been surprised my readings came in about 170/94 at night before bedtime.  I went to bed a little worried, but I had already dealt with a heart rate in the low 50s and even 40s and was told "it's the medicine, give the blood pressure medicine a chance to do its thing."  All day Saturday, it was still high, 164/95 when I woke, and 160/96 before bedtime.  But I started reading about sodium and it really is the worst for blood pressure.  I talked to my clinical study lady and she said if it doesn't come down or I feel sick, go to the ER.

    After eating a bunch of fruit all day and too much water, not to mention some romantic time since we were alone, I did get my blood pressure to read 133/84, so it shows I can bring it down.  This then prompted Wife, we went for a drive and ended up at a weird HEB, but now we are focusing on low sodium foods, and reading on potassium chloride, a salt substitute which is supposed to be good for you, potassium replaces sodium and it doesn't seem to be bad like sodium is.  I am now in a new mindset of trying to lower my blood pressure by reducing sodium and increasing potassium.  Sunday morning my blood pressure was 154/95 with a more normal heart rate of 67.  I realize it is still high, but better than 170/94.  I will keep working on it, Amazon just delivered some Nusalt, a sodium replacement, so we'll see.

    I wrote this Sunday morning, but I am adding that the changes in diet already seem to be helping, in real time.  Last night my readings were 129/83, with a hr of 73, and this after taking Mijo up to Georgetown and back in shitty traffic.  Monday morning, my readings are 147/86, with a hr of 63.  The meds are supposed to elevate the readings, but this is before taking my blood pressure medicine.  I hope I have this thing under control, the weekend was a bit stressful.