Seeds, sunscreen and a spiralizer.

It has been an eventful week.

I was off Xeloda until yesterday (Tuesday). Over the week, I experienced the following:

Some fatigue
Neuropathy in my fingers and slightly in my toes
Dry mouth
A mouth sore

However, in the last three nights, I have been able to sleep through the night for two nights, a rare feat!

My blood tests have been encouraging. Good blood pressure, a pulse of 59, increased white blood cell count and hemoglobin. My platelets are still low though. All in all, a good report. What is more, people say that I look healthy. I feel healthy.

The colonoscopy went well. I survived prep day with not too much difficulty. I actually looked forward to a sleep while on the table. Alas, it was all too short.

I awoke to be greeted by a friendly, caring research manager and shortly thereafter, a rather miffed GI doctor. Apparently my consumption of Dave's Powerseed bread caused several seeds to remain in my colon and they gummed up his scope three times, he noted gruffly. So, if you want to annoy your GI. eat seeds before your colonoscopy! There was one small polyp, but he did not seem concerned about that. Of course, would you be concerned about anything other that your clogged scope?

You may recall that to avoid skin issues while taking Xeloda I use sunscreen. The research manager found a list of acceptable sun screens and I purchased one of them which is a lotion. The only problem is that the zinc oxide kind of sticks on the skin, causing my arms to look white. I was asked what was wrong with my arms at the colonoscopy center and I told them it was leprosy! They soon figured out the truth.

The research manager has a new toy......a spiralizer......which she can use to make spaghetti-like spiral of things like zucchini. She tried it the first day and then used a recipe that night for dinner. I found it very hot (as in spicy hot) and was struggling. I went through 40 ounces of water just trying to get through dinner. When I said that it was hot, the research manager admitted that she found it hot also. I think she used half a cup of red pepper flakes instead of the half a teaspoon that the recipe probably called for. She promised to cut back next time and maybe even not put any in my half of the dinner. Since I find the spiralized zucchini pretty good, I look forward to that.

It is time for an epsom salt soak. I will pretend to read my book (Being Mortal - an interesting read), while listening to the baseball game.

Thanks for listening.