A Bit of a Stretch

One thing I haven't touched on much during the whole recovery process is Deb's range of motion, specifically in her upper body.  She was fairly sore after the original surgery itself with the right side being the worse (mainly due to the additional work the surgeon had to do with the lymph nodes on that side).  She had really only just started to feel improvement before the port went in and messed it all up, leaving her bruised, stiff, and tight on the left side.  Now the right side is her better side.  Go figure.  Been there, done that so many times I get royalties on the t-shirts now.

So part of the weekly routine, along with the chemotherapy I have been reporting on, is a visit to a physical therapist.  Happily we don't have to drive all the way downtown for that appointment since it is only a few miles from the house to her office.

Deb has now seen the physical therapist four times as of yesterday, and she has actually been improving in her range of motion - and comfort in that range of motion - each time.  The therapist goes through a routine of numerous stretches for Deb to do at home, so Deb and I have been dealing with those a few times a day as well (I'm mostly there to support her arm at full extension and say "Relax ... relax ... relax ... more ... relax a little more ... relax ..." over and over).  I have been very encouraged by her progress so far, but she still has a little further to go.  And honestly, she's already got better range than I do (or will ever have again) in some directions.  But not all.  At least I still have that.

So to give you a general idea of our week these days, this is the list of appointments:

• Monday - Yeah, Chemo Day.  We also have to go to pick up Deb's cold caps at 8:00am when PraxAir opens.
• Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday - Physical therapy.  There isn't really a set day or time.  We're really just scheduling around Deb's work commitments.
• Friday - Bloodwork draw.  Deb has to go have her blood drawn in advance of Chemo Day, so at some point across the day she will pop down to a lab a few miles from here (the Northgate office of the medical group her oncologist/surgeon/GP belong to - too bad they don't have an infusion center there).
• Also Friday - We go drop off the cold caps at PraxAir so they can be stored on dry ice over the weekend and thus be nice and cold on Monday mornings.  We try to do this around 4:30-4:45pm figuring that JJ won't be too busy around that time.

And then we just do the other stuff (like stretches and so on) at regular intervals.  There will be a couple of breaks in the exact timing of our routine during the two weeks (so far) when Deb has travel scheduled, but everything will still go on about like that as long as she's doing chemotherapy and PT sessions.

Oh, and one thing to report about Monday (since I posted early that day).  Deb's oncologist listened to the current list of side-effects and severity (it's usually her first question) and decided to cut the dose of her Taxol down a little bit.  She felt that the adjustment won't affect the effectiveness of the drug, but will decrease the severity of those side-effects.  Time will tell.  We are paying very close attention to the side-effects.  Very close indeed.