Day 175--Whatever Happened to Salsa?

Everyone who knows Torger well knows that there are pretty much three staples to his diet: salsa, iced tea, and pizza. He eats and enjoys many other foods, but if he has at least one of these three, he's generally pretty content. Now that he's off immunosuppressants, he can have iced tea again, but he's had consistent issues with his tongue post-transplant that have made salsa and pizza hard for him to manage. A lot of fellow cancer patients have told us that food tasted like metal to them after chemo, and fortunately, Torger hasn't had that issue. While he was on immunosuppressants, he just couldn't taste very well...so what he could stomach really depended a lot on texture. Both refried beans and pizza seemed slimey to him. Now, he can taste, but even mildly tangy foods start to burn his tongue after just a few bites, which then ruins his taste for the rest of that meal and hours afterward. And I do mean "mildly tangy"--salad dressings, tomato sauce of any kind, oranges, pickles, green olives--they're all too much for him. It's thrown us both for a loop, since I've pretty much been able to get him to eat a lot of things over the years just by throwing in some hot peppers and dousing the dish with salsa! I am learning to cook bland, and he is impatiently waiting for the day when food tastes normal again. In the meantime, we're just working to keep his weight up and make sure he gets enough nutrients to keep him going.

Day 174--Checking Back In

Wow...I didn't realize that it had been nearly a month since I updated the blog. If anyone's still reading it, sorry about that! The first part of this past month was largely taken up with just trying to get back into some kind of normal routine between work, meals, doctor's appointments, etc. Life at home is considerably more complex, for some reason, than life in the hotel, and we've been a little bit at sea. We were just starting to get the rhythm down when Torger developed his first post-transplant complication, which has required several doctor's visits here and in Denver over the last two weeks. It was just about two weeks ago that we noticed he'd developed three, quarter-sized red lesions on his skin: one on his thigh, one on his back, and one on his ankle. About the same time, he started to have a dry cough that would just show up periodically and then go away. It's not a bad cough...just one that comes up periodically, most often at night when he's lying down or right after he's eaten...and then subsides. Since Dr. Tse is in Hong Kong for two weeks, we went in to see Torger's local oncologist, Dr. Romero, right away. Dr. Romero rightly decided that he's not enough of an expert in graft vs. host disease to be able to render an informed diagnosis, so we e-mailed Dr. Tse who arranged for Torger to get a skin biopsy and CT scan back at the hospital in Denver. The initial biopsy of the lesions indicates they're probably nothing terrible...we think that Torger might be having some kind of reaction to one of his medications. But the CT scan did show something in his lungs that the doctors are calling "a little pneumonia," so they scheduled us to go down to the hospital again today to meet with an infectious disease specialist, Dr. Levi. This is the first time he's seen Dr. Levi, but we really liked her; she's very matter-of-fact and thorough. She was irritated because the pathology results from the skin biopsy weren't back yet, and she said she thought the emergence of the skin lesions and the cough at around the same time was "suspicious." (Interestingly, while Torger was getting undressed for his exam, we found a new lesion on his other thigh...and noticed that the one on his back is almost gone. Hmmm.) She didn't seem to be alarmed about anything, but she also wasn't ruling anything out. She wants Torger to come back as soon as possible for a bronchial test that will give them a more detailed idea of what's going on in his lungs. We're actually keeping our fingers crossed right now that it's just "a little pneumonia" and not something more serious. For the most part, Torger's actually feeling pretty good right now, and we wouldn't be at all worried about such a little cough under normal circumstances. But these aren't exactly normal circumstances, so we're watching out for every little thing. Now we're just waiting for the next test and hoping everything turns out to be no big deal.

But to add to the excitement, the Colorado legislature is now talking about cutting 60% of the state budget for higher education! As you might imagine, this makes life in the CSU president's office a little bit exciting right now. Colorado is already 50th out of 50 states in terms of state funding for higher education, even though we have the highest per capita income west of the Mississippi (yes, we beat California). So slashing higher education is just pitiful. If you live in Colorado, write your legislator and speak out for public education!