March 4, 2025
Been a while since a medical update, so here goes....
Peritoneal dialysis was basically a bust. I made it through a week of it. Every time the machine drained the fluid back out of my belly, it hurt like hell. As in some of the worst pain I've ever experienced. On top of that, I had a very hard time getting the PD nurses to take me seriously about the pain I was having. "Oh, this happens with men because you aren't used to having pain in that area." I finally got through to my PD nurse by explaining that on a scale of 1 – 10, the burns on my neck from radiation treatments where the skin was literally burned off is my 10, and the pain from the peritoneal dialysis is a 9. So I've been back on hemodialysis for a while. A visit to the vascular surgeon who put in both my dialysis catheters said that this just happens with some people, and he's ordered a vein mapping ultrasound to see if I have good ebough veins for a hemodialysis fistula. In the meantime, he's asked me to do frequent flushes of the peritoneal catheter to see of the tissues surrounding the coiled end of the catheter might toughen up, but those hurt now too. So it's looking like I'll probably be sticking with hemodialysis on a permanent basis. At this point, I'm okay with that. The hemodialysis nurses and techs are nicer and take every aspect of their patients' care more seriously from what I've experienced.
With all the stuff going on kidney-wise, I nearly forgot all about the cancer situation which is the reason I have to deal with all the kidney disease stuff again.
Today was the three-month follow-up with Oncology, before which I did another PET scan. The scan showed new areas with cancerous growth behind my right ear (exactly opposite the spot where lymph nodes had metastasis behind my left ear a year ago) and a spot in the right lobe of my liver. So I'm back to immunotherapy starting next week. I won't be returning to the two drug regimen I was on before because of the severe side effects that had me in the hospital four times in two months and that I'm just now mostly recovered from. The oncologist is switching me to a new single drug therapy that shouldn't have the same side effects. He can't say for sure it won't, but I'm not going to choose to do nothing, so we'll just have to go for it and see what happens. That's not exciting, but he did say that there won't be more surgery or radiation.
