The sub-ingeneous cotton ball predicament

Dear Brains Behind Temodar,

Thank you for your ingenious new drug that can kill my brain tumor and make me all better inside. There's only one problem, though. In the wonderful little process that you guys have spent thinking this drug up, you've overlooked one...petty...but albeit entirely frustrating bit of nonsense. I'm calling it the sub-ingenious cotton ball predicament.

A la the picture above, there's simple physics to consider with these bottles. A hole slightly larger than the size of my pinky finger doesn't really allow for a massive wad of cotton to be pulled through it very easily. What would make this more sensible??? Hmmm. AHA...a bigger hole! You see if you made the hole a bit bigger, say the size of the rest of the bottle, this whole mess could be entirely avoided. I don't want to have to ask my niece to use her little fingers to get my cotton ball out of the small-dose-of-poison container for me. (Is that even legal?) You see, this is just a tiny bit of frustration on top of a mountain of inconvenience. First we get the doctor bursting through his/her office saying, "OH...yeah, you have a brain tumor...and it's rather large." Then we get the brain surgery, and on top of that we get the news that it's cancerous: chemo and radiation...forever! Then we have to get six weeks of high dose radiation (that will probably shorten and severely change the rest of my life) and the cherry on top is this damn sub-ingenious cotton ball predicament.

So please, with your next batch of Temodar pills, just make the mouth of the jar the same size as the jar itself. That's all I ask. Thank You.

Truly Yours,
David Sommer

Cutting out steroids may be worse than radiation

Today I felt SO much better than I did the last two days. Get this to, it was just because I was trying to get off this dexamethasone (a corticosteroid) to a) let me sleep longer than 4 hours a day b) see if it has anything to do with this massive bump sitting on my forehead since the beginning of time (is it ever going away?) c) get rid of the acne that's creeping up on my face and d) get off the damn drug! Unfortunately, my body literally started to crumble when i cut down from 4mg to 2mg (that's how potent this drug is). I literally lost every ounce of energy. I couldn't help but sit around and watch TV and had annoying headaches. Sounds great, huh? (at least I don't have to worry about the tumor returning right now...?)

Now I'm feeling good again. I don't think the Temodar (chemo) pills are creating much of a problem yet, and I haven't started losing any hair from the radiation. That will happen though. It'll kill everything in it's path by mid 4th week. So I guess I'm either going to have to get a very strange looking haircut or shave it all off. Hmmm which one should I choose? I could kind of go for the odd haircut. I mean there's no time like the present, right?

One session down, twenty-nine to go

It's been a rough day. I took those two little chemo beauts in my hand last night and decided that it was time to cut back on the steroids I've been taking. Hopefully, this will give me a reprieve from the incessant hunger I've been feeling (The chemo has to be taken on an empty stomach which I've found increasingly harder to do post surgery for whatever reason.) Anyway, the whole combo of drug reductions/additions and then throwing the whole radiotherapy thing on top hasn't made for the most smooth transition from healing-from-surgery to being-killed-in-small-intervals. I've had a headache and felt out of it from cutting back on the steroid, and I was feeling sick earlier which I can only guess was from the chemo having it's way with my stomach. Then I got radiated! Yay! (ummm...opposite of yay actually.)

Here I am ready to get my brain blasted by high beam radiation. Contrary to how it appears, the mask is really uncomfortable actually. I can't really see anything or move my head, but I can hear these arms moving around me sounding off an alarm when the radiation beams begin to penetrate my skull. It was really comfortable in there (that's a big joke). I couldn't wait to run at full speed out of that place. I think my heart was racing the whole time thinking about all the radiation my poor little brain had to bear.

I need to stay positive though. This is just another step in this whole damn battle that I'm waging with my brain right now. I've got the surgery bit down, but this...this is a different story. I'll have to stay strong to stay on top or I'll simply float away.

Twenty-nine more sessions to go...