Hi Mary,

I hope Darryl got back from chemo OK...

I don't think I would have driven myself back and forth 200 miles on
the first day of chemo, but hey, more power to him :-)

My Dad took me the first time, after that I drove myself, but it's
only 5 miles or so round trip.

I've tolerated everything well so far.  I worked through the 5 weeks
of radiation and chemo before surgery, then had the surgery that left
me with a j-pouch as well as a temporary ileostomy bag and was off 6
weeks.  Started working again qand proceeded to work through the next
4 months of chemo again.  I threw up one single time on my very last
chemo session.  In March of this year, the ileostomy was reversed and
I'm now getting used to the j-pouch.

It's all right most of the time.  I have trouble occasionally because
I insist on eating and drinking whatever I want.  Then I often regret
it when it makes its way through.  One of the problems is that I have
these cluster BMs (Dr.s term) that are a major pain.  It's supposed to
get better with time, though.

My CEA never went up or down with the tumor or with chemo. (I wonder
if that means that the marker will never work as an indicator for me,
or could the counts go up in the future?) I'm supposed to have my
first CAT scan in July.  I'm a little nervous about that, but we'll
see - can't do anything about it either way anyway....

I hope that you and Darryl are doing OK,
Elsie