Chapter 13

January, 2007

By the middle of January, Don was down to 173 pounds-- and when you considered that weight was stretched over a six foot six frame, he was painfully skinny. As I wrote in one of my journals, "He has bones sticking out in places I didn't even know people HAD bones." When I hugged him, I could feel his vertebrae and his shoulder bones jutting out beneath the skin, as if he were literally skin and bones. He'd never been so skinny before, not even in high school.

He started his oral treatment on January 26. The first reaction to the Tarceva was, as he wryly described it, "unsightly teenage blemishes." In other words, his skin broke out in a rather severe rash that looked like a whole lot of pimples. It didn't seem to bother him-- it looked uncomfortable, but didn't itch or hurt. He made some joking remarks about having acne again, and kept going to the office every day.

He was very, very tired, but more as a side effect of the disease rather than of the treatment. On February 3, I vented a bit in one of my journals:

We had to go to a nephew's birthday party today. He lives two hours away, so we piled into the van and took off early this afternoon, and returned this evening. I drove, but even so, the poor hubby was totally worn out by the trip there, so tired he couldn't even get up off the couch and walk into the kitchen to sing "Happy Birthday." And when we got home, he went straight up the stairs and went to bed, before eight o'clock.

I hate seeing a guy who's always been strong and energetic waste away like this. Hate it. Every day he manages to get to work, and then he comes home and lies on the sofa for the rest of the night. And on weekends he lies on the sofa pretty much all day. He has no energy, he feels miserable, and the weight is simply melting off him, to the point where you can count his ribs and his vertebrae now.

And this is just the beginning of this stupid illness. It's likely to get worse from here on out. Growl. Stupid cancer. I hate it.

The next side effect was more serious. By early February, he was suffering from severe diarrhea-- a common side effect of the medicine, but one that could cause big problems for anyone, let alone someone whose body was already under a great deal of stress. He stopped going to the office, for obvious reasons, and started working from home (in my office, much to the detriment of my writing).

I did my best to keep him hydrated, but by February sixth he seemed weak and miserable. We called the doctor, and they had us come in and took a look at him. Not only was he dehydrated, but he was jaundiced as well. They administered an IV to rehydrate him.

By the next day, Don was feeling much better, and went back to telecommuting. He'd lost five or six more pounds by this point, but he was still determined to keep working. The doctor took him off the medicine for three days to let his body recover a bit, and told us he'd put Don onto a lesser dosage in a few days. As the doctor told us, "The point is to kill the cancer, not the patient."

Valentine's Day went unobserved, for the first time in our relationship. Don was working from home, and in no condition to run out to the store and buy me a dozen roses, or to go out to eat at a nice restaurant. He wasn't particularly interested in eating a fancy dinner, either.

He was mostly living upstairs now, moving from the bed to the "office" in the corner and back again. I brought him breakfast on a tray every morning (the most tempting, fattening pastries I could find). He ate lunch at the desk, and dinner in bed. His world was mostly bounded by the four walls of our bedroom, except when he had to go to the doctor.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with him, talking and snuggling with him, and the kids wandered in and out. The girls looked sad, but seemed to be coping with everything fairly well. The older boy was too young to really understand what was going on, and the toddler was, of course, completely oblivious. His happy giggles made Don smile like nothing else could.

Don went back onto a lower dosage of the Tarceva, which didn't affect him as badly as the higher dosage had. On February 15th, he finally felt up to going to the office again. It didn't last long, however; by February 20th, he was working from home again.

And five days later, everything started to unravel.

Read Chapter 14 here.