Trying to Resolve Some Issues

Kevin’s feet have started to improve over the past few days. They are still very swollen and red, but they are a bit less painful for Kevin. His feet have caused some interference with physical therapy, so he hasn’t been able to practice in the standing frame recently, but he is still transferring in and out of chairs, sitting outside in the wheelchair and working a lot on occupational therapy exercises.

Our best guess is still that this swelling is a side effect of one of the chemotherapy drugs. Plus, the partial blood clots in both his legs do not help his circulation, so the clots are probably exacerbating the situation. These are the same clots that were discovered at Santa Clara Valley’s rehab hospital—Kevin still has a filter to prevent the clots in his legs from moving to his heart. We’re happy that his feet are less painful, but we’d like them to return to normal a bit more quickly!

We’re also working on tapering Kevin off the oral steroids he’s been on for months. He’s down to a low level, but with each drop down a milligram, his symptoms get a bit worse. The steroids decrease the swelling around the tumor, but each time we try to taper the steroids, the swelling increases a bit until his body readjusts to the new level. At this point, he can only eat soft foods because the swelling has affected his swallowing, but we’re hoping that within a few days he’ll be able to eat regular food again.

Kevin continues to enjoy being home. He is able to sit outside on the deck, and he watched Kathlin and I give Chammy a bath a couple days ago. Kathlin is also convinced she can teach Scooter, our cat, how to sit. She gives Scooter a treat every time he sits on command; I’m not sure if Scooter actually realizes what he’s doing and why he gets a treat, but Kevin gets a kick out of the cat eventually sitting on command! Kevin still enjoys watching the Food Network, and he’s also been watching a bit of the World Cup. It’s a good thing we got satellite TV installed; NBC and a couple Spanish channels wouldn’t have been very entertaining.

Thank you to everyone for your support, tips, help and hope. Please keep sending Kevin good thoughts and prayers!