Update

I listed four key problems in my last post.  Four things where I really wanted to see some improvement.

First was my appetite.  In the past week, I have been eating more real food and relying less on shakes made with ice cream and Ensure.  I will admit that certain foods, especially cooked veggies, still aren't very appetizing.  But, proteins, some carbs, and salads all seem to be going down better.  On Saturday, we went to a concert in Boston and visited a fantastic restaurant called Row 34 for a late lunch.

My wife and I shared 18 oysters, I ate a very rich lobster roll, and I even helped my son finish his fish and chips.  Plus, I had a glass of wine - my first adult beverage since surgery.  While the food did seem very rich, it went down just fine and it was nice to eat such a high quality meal.  Of course, if you pay close attention, I had no cooked veggies.

Sunday for lunch, I went to Shake Shack beside our hotel and had a shake and a burger.  I wasn't surprised at all that this went down just fine.

Secondly, I was complaining about how much I was sleeping, with some nights being 14-16 hours of sleep.  I did sleep 10.5 hours on Saturday night, and would have slept later but the hotel had a checkout time.  And, I did take a 3+ hour nap that afternoon.  But, I am not sleeping as much during our commute.  I stayed awake the entire drive this morning.  Getting out of bed for work is getting easier.   And, my total sleep time is decreasing, although I was over 8 hours every night for the past 10.

Thirdly, I complained about lack of desire to exercise.  Last week, I just started forcing myself to get out and at least go for a walk.  I walked 5 of 7 days leading into this weekend, and then walked quite a bit in Boston on Saturday.  I have to admit that my back is a bit sore when walking and I'm hoping that will improve as soon as I start lifting.  It is still my goal to resume CrossFit a week from today on 7/24.

Lastly, I had complained about night sweats.  They are markedly better.  I think I've gone four nights in a row right now without changing my pajamas.  I was sweating a bit last night, but it honestly wasn't too bad.  Hopefully, this trend will continue.

So, I'm making progress in all four areas where I said I needed to do so a week ago.  That's good news.

On the other hand, I got my post-op pathology report on Friday and that wasn't such good news.  The chemos I've done have had two primary goals.  The first has been to shrink tumors to make it easier to remove them.  My first chemo did this very well, and the second showed only moderate success.  The second goal was for the chemo to kill the more aggressive and dangerous cells in my tumors, hopefully reverting the disease to a less dangerous form.  The report I got on Friday showed that this simply isn't the case, and this report showed more aggressive cell types than after my surgery in March of 2016.  This is very disheartening, to be honest.  I've sent an email to my surgeon's office, trying to get more information from him on what this really means for my prognosis and treatment going forward.  I haven't heard anything back yet.

Hopefully, this morning's thunderstorms are over and I'll get to walk while my wife does CrossFit tonight.