Tests and More Tests

I really haven't been able to eat right since the chemo a month ago. I thought that was just normal for someone going thru chemo. Then I ended up in the hospital with something seriously wrong. Then I got out with antibiotics that everyone was telling me was causing my problems eating. Then I finally got off the antibiotics and nothing changed - except for being a bit less nauseous. That's when I got the new oncologist who was able to really hear what I was saying.

Yesterday the gastroenterologist told me that she thinks my colitis was caused by having nutrapenia (depressed immune system) and then eating something that had bacteria in it. She's had several patients in the hospital over the past month with the same type of colitis that I had in my CT scans. They didn't have chemo - they were immuno-suppressed from asthma medication or other things.

She convinced me to go through an endoscopy where they take a camera and go down my throat into my stomach to rule out any ulcers. If there's an ulcer and that's the only problem, then it's easy to solve. She wanted to do a colonoscopy to take a biopsy (which would let her know exactly what blew out my system) but I'm not healthy enough for that so she convinced me to get yet another CT scan. She needs to see if my colon has gotten better since I was in the hospital. If it hasn't, I need to get back on those horrible antibiotics (which I was on for 2 weeks but she normally recommends someone like me to be on them for 4 - 6 weeks). If my colon is better but just not completely healed, then I may not have to go back on the antibiotics. Then she'll just treat my symptoms until I completely heal.

In any case, I can't move forward with my treatment to eradicate these bad cells if I've still got colitis going on. I can't have chemo and I can't do surgery. So that really scares me. Whatever progress I've made in that area may be lost. Still, I just want to feel better and be able to eat normally again with no pain, so whatever she tells me to do, I'll do. Tomorrow. Thursday I'm going back to Dominican for more tests.