Marshall has now taken the chemo pill for three days (and the prednisone was reduced to 4mg twice a day instead of 5mg twice a day -- I think they may wean him off of the prednisone) and so far the only possible side effect he feels is fatigue. But he's had that all along with the other medications, too, so not sure if it's the chemo or not.
The pain he was having in his back has let up. He didn't take any oxycodone today at all. So it probably was stress related. He does still have the hip pain when he moves in certain ways.
Tomorrow we need to get up at 5AM to hit the road back to Denver to see the radiation oncologist and find out what our plan of action is going to be. Boy, I wish we could just say "Beam me up, Scottie" for these trips to Denver!
Tonight we got on the internet to see what rent costs are in Denver so that maybe we could rent an apartment and we could take our animals with us on these trips rather than agonize over trying to get a dogsitter. But the rents are pretty high so that may not be an option for us.
Through an interesting series of events, we were able to get a second opinion on Marshall's treatment. Our oncologist is Thomas Flaig. Dr. Flaig's boss is Dr. David Crawford at the University Hospital. It turns out that Dr. Crawford knows Fred (my boss). A few weeks ago Dr. Crawford was coordinating a big charity golf tournament to benefit prostate cancer research and I got a call from Wendy, a gal who works with him.
Wendy and I talked a lot while coordinating Fred's foursomes for the golf tournament and last week when we were at the cancer center Wendy met us for lunch. She brought Dr. Crawford with her! So I couldn't resist asking his opinion. He said he would check Marshall's records and let us know what he thought.
He sent me an email last night saying that he agreed with Dr. Flaig's plan of action but there was one other drug that he might suggest to add to the mix. He said he would talk to Dr. Flaig about it and they would get back to us. That was kind of cool.
And it turns out that Wendy is a patient advocate for many doctors and medical facilities so she is going to be a huge resource for us. She brought us a ton of information when we met. We were very fortunate to make her acquaintance.
Off to bed -- tomorrow will be a long day.
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