The 10 Minute Ab Work Out

Lay down in bed…run to the bathroom…barf…lay down in bed…run to the bathroom…barf…repeat until desired ab firmness is attained, or you pass out.

ACK! What a long week it has been. Mostly just Wednesday and Thursday - which seemed to drag on and on. Wednesday I got out of bed for treatment and then for an hour later that afternoon. I threw up four times and spent the rest of the day trying to keep from throwing up so the medicine could have a chance to kick in. It never did, because it never stayed down. I woke up Thursday just as pathetic and warned my radiation tech to keep a close eye on me because I was barely hanging on and did not want to throw up in my mask – at this point I had thrown up twice already that morning. He felt sorry for me that I was feeling so bad and reassured me if anything was wrong, I just had to wave my arms and he would run in. I made it through, thank goodness; however, I still had to hang around for blood work and a doctor’s appointment at 7. I got some more meds from the doctor, and we headed home. My barf bucket was riding shot gun with me, but I made it home and into bed. Warner pumped me up with some drugs and it wasn’t long before I was barfing again. The count on Thursday was 5 times, including once at physical therapy. I did manage to get out of bed and sit on the couch and watch some tv (I figured it was just as easy to barf from the couch as it was from the bed, I was correct).

Physical therapy would have been great if I had been feeling wonderful. I really like my therapist, he’s really nice and sympathizes a lot and is going to let me kind of work at my own pace. I’m going to go three times a week for six weeks, or as much as I can handle when the side effects start kicking in from radiation. He tested the range of motion in my arms and neck – which is pretty low and he tested my grip strength. My right arm us at 50 pounds but my poor left arm (the skin graft arm) is a big fat 0. I did the hand bicycle for four minutes and that did me in, I was running to the bathroom yet again to empty my stomach contents. After that, he said no more physical stuff and he put me in a private room, with a trashcan near by and worked on stretching out my neck muscles. That was nice because I got a little more range of motion in my neck!! Needless to say, my therapist has his work cut out for him, but he said I should be able to play tennis just fine after all this is over.

Since the vomiting had not ceased by Thursday afternoon, Warner called Dr. Pou for some advice. She told him the best bet was to call Dr. Bienvenu because he would probably want me to go get fluids because my vomiting was so severe. So Warner did, and yes, we had to go to the ER and get some fluids via IV and some antinausea meds via IV, I got two liters of fluids over like 2 hours and I only got up to go to the bathroom once last night, how’s that for dehydration. The ER trip has helped to get a jump start on getting the nausea under control and today has been MUCH better. I haven’t been nauseous or thrown up once. Granted, my new medicine knocks me out, seriously, it knocks me off my feet for hours (but it works). I got home from radiation today (27 left to go!!!!!!!!!!!) and crawled into bed and was out like a light. I would wake up for a few minutes while mom or Warner gave me my meds, but that was it. Apparently Warner came home at 10 to get his boots and kissed my forehead, and I don’t remember a thing, zilch, nada, nothing. I finally got out of bed at 5:30 this evening! And I can definitely go back to sleep again here soon, I’m just a little hungry and trying to come up with something to eat, French Fries sound good but I’ll probably settle with something we have around the house…Hope everyone has a relaxing weekend!!!