from Bob S.

Marti had a difficult evening saturday and was very disoriented, at one time thinking she was in Virginia Beach. But she did much better on sunday and was more alert and oriented. She was able to go out to a really good movie and to dinner. The shingles are drying up nicely and the skin burns are improving. Barbara is here and is a huge help.
Love
Bob

From Bob S.

Marti's chemo was cancelled yesterday because of the shingles she has. Dr. Mehotra plans to hold off on chemo for 2 weeks to let her build up her immune system before starting again. Her appetite is good, but her memory and concentration is off. I hope that will get better later. Eileen is here and is a great help. I heard that John Marron may be visiting tonight.
More soon
Love Bob

From Bob S.

Friday was the last radiation treatment. We had a nice meeting with Dr. Pollack and he feels she has done well. We won't know the final results of the radiation for between 4 and 10 weeks, and the treatment continues to have effects for that range of time. The mail problem is fairly bad skin burns in the right armpit. The burns on the chest are healing faster. Dr. Pollack says the skin should be better in about 2 weeks. Marti will continue to have chemo weekly on thursdays. A new problem is that she now has some shingles on the left sides of her back and we immediately started the medicine for that last night. Shingles is a re-outbreak of chickenpox, so ANYONE WHO HAS NOT HAD CHICKENPOX SHOULD NOT VISIT RIGHT NOW, until this is healed.
Eileen is coming for the next 2 weeks. Kathleen has been a tremendous help.
Thanks to everyone
Love Bob

From Bob S.

We really enjoyed spending the weekend with Sara and Nick--it really cheered Marti up. She was fairly chipper most of the weekend, but is having problems with skin burns at the radiation sites. We are putting various creams on, which partially helps but not completely--The nurse at the radiation therapy office says this is expected and she has seen worse.
Marti had another radiation treatment today and there are only 4 more to go. Kathleen is back, which we greatly appreciate.
Marti did get to go out to dinner sat and sunday, and she even went to the casino for a short time sat nite and won about $10. Marti and I went home, but Nick and Sara stayed and played poker for a few hours, which they said was really fun.
Thanks to everyone and I'll be back later in the week.
Love Bob

From Bob Shalowitz

Marti had her tough date yesterday (both radiation and chemo) and came through it very well, with major assistance from Kathleen. She also saw Dr Hess this week and she is now off of almost all of her BP medicine. she was on 3 different BP pills and now she is only on half of one of them.
She has some skin burning in the right axilla and the central chest, which is not unexpected--We have started topical skin creams which help.
She having her last "regular" radition treatment today. Next week she gets 5 more radiation treatments to much smaller, focused-down areas, called a "boost", and then she will be done with radiation, but she will continue weekly chemo.
Sara and Nick are coming for the weekend, while Kathleen goes to visit her friends in Frostburg-obviously we are very happy to be seeing our prodigal kids.
Best regards to all our friends and relatives, and thanks for all the support.
Love
Bob S.

From Bob Shalowitz

Better news today. Once we got Marti's blood pressure a little higher, whe was back to her old self. She was much more chipper over the weekend and was able to talk and think much better. Short term memory is still less than normal, but Kathleen and I both thought she was much better. Also, her MRI saturday, does not show any tumor in the brain, so that is very good news. Today, she is having blood tests and will see Dr Hess, our internist, tuesday to follow up on the blood pressure and see if other adjustments are needed.
Kathleen came friday, and Barbara did not leave until sunday, so all 4 of us were able to go out to a really great dinner on saturday, which we all thought was very nice. Then we had a 3 person Super Bowl party on sunday which was also nice.
So things are a lot better than they were most of last week.
Radiation is today at about 4 PM.
Best regards
Bob S.

Update from Bob S.

Marti has continued having a good attitude, but there have been some chalanges this week. She has been more tired, having more trouble walking, and sometimes getting dizzy and light headed when standing. She has more trouble finishing a sentence, or thinking of a word, and somtimes just stops and gives up trying to finish. Short term memory is definitely more of a problem.-----Some of this may be due to low blood pressure. She has had difficult to control high blood pressure for a long time and now that she is on so many meds, her blood pressure is low normal, OK for most of us, but not enough for her---plus her labs 2 days ago showed that she was dehydrated. ----so she recieved extra IV fluids yesterday, and her blood pressure meds have been cut in half---it may turn out that she can get off of them completely for awhile.-----She is also having an MRI of the head sat at 3:30 to make sure everything is alright there.-----------She has been eating OK but we are trying to encourage more fluids, not just water--I wish she liked gatoraid but whe hates it for some reason---
Barabra has been here almost 2 weeks and she has been fantastic--it would have been impossible without her, and Marti loves cuddling Luke, too(Barbara's very large Bijon).
I will do another update this weekend, after the MRI--
Love to all our friends and relatives
Bob S.