Keeping up with the Komplications

Eric started xeloda again 4 weeks ago. Last monday was the beginning of the 2nd round in this cycle. So far he seems to be doing ok with it. Today is his last day of chemp before his weeklong break. We had our 2nd appointment with the derm on monday, as his skin is still breaking down something awful. They are going to try another form of ointment which eric used awhile ago. They are also going to keep him on a constant low dose of antibiotic (doxycycline)to try to ward off infections, but we need to be leery of him getting c-diff again. His cultures have come up positive for Staph, and acinetobacter. So it is obvious the need for antibiotics is there, or he is going to end up in the hospital again. Then I get a phone call from derm on tuesday saying Eric tested positive for a different staph strain, but so far not showing as MRSA. But this staph is resistant to the doxycycline. So after a few days on that he had to stop, and use hibiclensse bath and an ointment until we meet with infectious disease in 2 weeks. Grrrrrr!!!

Dr. Locatoure, the derm, wanted to treat Eric with an additional chemo called Methotrexate solely for the purpose of trying to control the skin breakdown. Methotrexate is used for some forms of breast cancer and leukemia, but it can be used off label for chemical abortions and autoimmune disorder, like Eric's eczema. It can have adverse effects on the liver, which Eric only has 1/3 of. As a result, for right now, Oz (Dr. Kemeny), nixed it. In a way it sucks, because Methotrexate is really a great way to treat the skin breakdown but she does not want to interfere with the effectiveness of his chemo for the colon cancer mets. Its frustrating, but I am sure there is some wisdom to it.

Other than that we continue to take things one day at a time. There are bad days, and then some not so bad days. The good days are few and far between anymore. But every once in a while there are some good days thrown in there. The neuropathy is getting intense at times, as he is showing symptoms from chemos past. The worst thing is the trunk neuropathy, where several times, well honestly almost constantly, he feels like he is being stung by thousands of bees on his entire trunk region. We are hoping that as the skin recovers, this will go away as well. It is not a common side effect to any of the chemos that he is on, so they believe it is either a side effect of his his most recent surgeries (some sort of nerve damage), or the result of the trauma to his skin. We are obviously hoping this is temporary and not permanent, as it causes Eric a great deal of pain.

So far we have no other appointments until September. The first week in September Eric will have a PET scan and a CT scan. The following week he will review the results with the docs. By that point he will have had 2.5 rounds of xeloda in his system post surgery. We pray that there will be no signs of disease. Until then, as long as there are no changes, I probably won't have anything to update.