#11 Was A Breeze

Today's treatment goes down as the least painful of all my treatments.  I did take a pain pill before installation (which unfortunately didn't stop all the pain of the installation) to take the edge off.  It was my only pill today as the rest of the eight hours were entirely pain free.  The only thing that was different was the amount of blood and bloody bits that I had today.  It started up three hours in and lasted for another 4 1/2 hours.

Another thing that was normal today was my lack of appetite for regular food.  I made a sandwich for lunch and that was the last good piece of food that I ate except for my treatment day indulgence of chocolate chip cookies.  For some reason, I get a real sweet tooth during my treatment day and don't allow myself to feel guilty about over doing it on the cookies.

One more treatment day next Wednesday and then I'm off for another 3 months.  I'm very thankful for all the emails and well wishes from everyone.  Most importantly, the prayers from everyone are being answered and while the day is exhausting, it was mainly pain free.  Besides the treatment days, please continue to pray for my body to heal and that the ever present fatigue will go away.  I'm tired of being tired and would like to have some time of feeling normal again before my next 3 treatment cycle starts again in 3 months.

Treatment #10 Is In the Books

Treatment #10 was very similar to treatment #9.  I did take a preemptive pain pill today to help with the installation and it seemed to have worked.  Because it was such a nice day today in Franklin, I went for a two mile walk with Nancy after the installation to help slosh the solution around the bladder.   Then it was back to the rocking chair to finish the two hours of holding it.  The next 6 hours was water, water and more water.  The only side effects today were some blood (which is very normal) and an extremely sore and worn out bladder.  I had virtually no appetite today and suspect that I lost a couple of pounds today.

It was great to get through today and the treatments are starting to get routine.  It is certainly a full day with twelve trips to the bathroom in a six hour timeframe and one gallon of chlorine literally down the drain to kill the TB virus in the toilet bowl.  Now I'm trying to decompress after the intense day and I'm hoping for a good night of sleep.

Thanks to everyone that was praying for me today and we get to do this all over again next Wednesday.