I visited the doc today. He said that the hiccups, the dry skin, and really, every side-effect I’m having is from one particular drug in the chemo cocktail – the one called Bleomycin. He’d never seen hiccups before (it’s the overachiever in me), but they were ‘described’ as a side-effect of the medicine. He told me to go pick up a liquor from the local liquor store that would do the trick. And in case the 45% alcohol didn’t help, he also filled out a prescription for a muscle relaxant as a backup.
After sucking on a few alcohol soaked sugar cubes, as suggested, my hiccups had still not left, so we went with the backup plan. The pills chilled me out a bit, but every three hours the hiccups would be back. I have a stubborn diaphragm.
The doc also said that there’s an 80% chance that I won’t have to do radiation. I don’t know where he gets this statistic, but it sounds nice. In reality, we won’t know if I’m in the 80% that doesn’t or in the 20% that does until I get my CT/PET scan next month and we see how Tito’s doing. I’m encouraged, though, by the progress my body has made through this, and I’m crossing my fingers that I might be in the 80%. Cross yours too, ok? Radiation is a nasty process that I don’t want to go through (I guess the same could be said of chemotherapy…).
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