Monthly Archives: February 2011

“Hope is a dangerous thing…”

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I’ve avoided saying this out loud (and this is typing it, so it doesn’t count) and even now I don’t know if I’m going to finish this thought, or even post it if I do, but: I have this recurring fantasy/daydream that when we meet with the oncologist on Thursday, and we see the results of  last week’s CT Scan, that she’ll tell us that we can start counting down til my last chemo treatment… That the tumors are gone, and that I’ll be done in April.

This is really the first time that I’ve allowed myself to get excited, or to think about the possibility of being done with treatment. Up until this point, I’ve really REALLY tried not to think about it too much, choosing instead to not get my hopes up and to just take each treatment as it comes without thinking about where I am in the overall scheduled course of treatment. Any time I used to think about crunching those numbers I would always stop myself. “What if I’m only a quarter of the way there? Or, at best, halfway,” I’d think to myself. And to be honest its one of the most depressing thoughts that I’ve allowed myself to have. If I’m only halfway, that means that I basically have to again go through everything that I’ve already been though. That thought alone has been enough to stop me from thinking about it.

That is until now.

This week I allowed myself to count it out on my fingers. “October to November. November to December …”

As we creep into February we are now moving towards what could be the shorter end of the  “6-8 months of chemo” that I was told to expect. And now that I know this,  I can’t help but start thinking about the end.

I think about it now. I think about it A LOT.

I think about how good it will feel to be done. I think about the things that I might be able to do again as early as the spring. And I think about a time, possibly in the near future, when I can say that I HAD cancer.

I’m cautioned by a line that Morgan Freeman’s character Red says in The Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Possibly more accurate in this case is that hope can lead to disappointment.

See, there is a reason that I’ve started thinking about this. In my mind there is a chance that these CT Scan results will be good enough that and that the tumors will have shrunk back enough that we we’ll start talking about an exit strategy. What we want is a CT Scan that show no sign of disease and at that point the doctor will order my final two rounds of chemo (a total of another 4 treatments) and I’ll be done, six and half months after I started. I promised myself that I wouldn’t start thinking like this, but I’m just so ready to be done that I can’t help myself.

Now that I’ve started counting, I can’t stop. The downside to this is that I now know how long it possibly could be. If I don’t hear what I want to hear this week then it will likely be another 2 months until my next CT Scan, and assuming THAT test shows us what we want to see I’ll still have to go through that final 2 months of treatments, so that brings the next window for my final treatment in 4 months. At that point I’ll have been undergoing chemo treatments for almost 10 months. If that’s the case, it would mean that I’m only halfway…

I don’t know, maybe in the end Red was wrong and Andy Dufresne was right:  “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”

I look back at the pictures from my first scans and in my mind the tumors look like they are at least half as big in December as they were in October. So wouldn’t that indicate that there is a good chance that now, another two months later, they are gone?

I hope so.

“Done”

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There is another reason why I keep thinking maybe I’m almost done with this treatment course: I normally feel pretty good during the days leading up to my next chemo appointment since obviously they are they days farthest away from the last chemo appointment. But this week, I don’t just feel pretty good, I’ve felt great.

There are a few possibilities behind this. The first and most likely is that it’s because I’m currently not on the full treatment regimen. If you recall, last month, because I was beginning to show signs of possible lung damage, I was taken off of the bleomycin, leaving me on only 3 of 4 chemo drugs that I would normally be given. I’ve commented a few times over the last month on how the lack of bleomycin seems to have favorable results on the way that I feel, and perhaps and this is just another way that it’s presenting itself.

But then I think there is another possibility. Maybe I’ve felt so great this week because the tumors are gone? Maybe I’m at the point now that that only thing keeping me “sick” is the chemo drugs themselves. If that’s the case, then maybe now that I’m this far away from my last dose I’m starting to feel normal again (for lack of a better term). I’m still not a doctor (you’d think I would be by now, seriously), but it seems to make sense to me.

God, I just can’t get over how great it would be walk out of that office tomorrow knowing that it’s almost over. We are pinning our hopes on some great news today in a serious way. A way that I haven’t allowed myself up until this point. And again, I’m terrified that we are setting ourselves (and everyone) up to be disappointed. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve been so reluctant to talk about it in the first place, but it goes back to my commitment to be honest with myself and really use this blog as a tool to document where I am at both physically and mentally in the process.

So where I am physically and mentally? The answer  is “DONE.” I’m just done with it all. I’m done physically, and I’m done mentally. And now all I can think about is that I hope my oncologist sees it the same way, and that she thinks that I’m “done” medically.

Today I’m either going cry tears of joy, or I’m going to shatter into a million pieces. Either way its going to be a big day.

We’ll keep you posted.

One more down… THREE LEFT TO GO!

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Stine here, with good news!

The oncologist told us yesterday that she has seen enough progress to start the countdown to the end of Brian’s chemo. He will have four more sessions, and the beginning of the end happened yesterday immediately after our meeting with her. That means he now has three chemo sessions left, and he should be done at the end of March!

However, he still has to get an “all clear” PT (or “pet”) scan in two months at the end of March when he is done with chemo. Based on the results of the pet scan, and a consultation with a radiation oncologist, we may or may not be totally done. She is considering having Brian go through a month of radiation after the end of chemo, which would happen Monday through Friday for a month, pushing his total treatment time to the end of April. That would only happen if the radiation oncologist thinks it is necessary after the results of his pet scan.

So, we still have to wait and see what his pet scan looks like at the end of March. However, we do know that we can start counting down to the end of chemo, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Today was also our lucky day, because we arrived a few hours earlier than we normally do so we could accommodate an opening in the oncologists schedule. That means we were a few hours ahead of schedule all day, and little did we know, that they serve lunch if you’re in a chemo session at noon! The food was actually pretty good.

Better than jello.

Chicken dijonaise, mashed potatoes, sauteed mushrooms with artichokes, and a side of lorezapam, and AVD chemo (hold the bleomycin).

The lung function test indicated that he will stay off the bleomycin for the remainder of chemo, which is fine by us.

Brian spent the evening napping and enjoying the celebration taco dinner Tanya brought over for us, and then he went to bed at 7:30. For the record, that was 30 minutes before he would have normally gone on stage. Thank you to Brian’s cast for for being patient with us, and letting Brian work around his chemo schedule. I gave the oncology nurses the promotional materials, because they were interested in attending a performance. =)

Thanks all for your good thoughts over the last few days and weeks. I am so pleased to finally be able to say that he only has two months of chemo left, and we can start the countdown. Finally, the end is in sight!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Things I Will Not Miss – Part I

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Toward the top of the list of things that I will not miss when this is all over would be the Neupogen injections. For 5 days after chemo I have to have a subcutaneous injection of a drug that helps to boost my white blood cell count so it will be high enough for me to safely undergo my next chemo treatment.

Christine has been giving me these injections for 5 months now and I don’t think I’ve made a single one of them easy for her. I complain, I protest, I whine. She’s really pretty incredible to put up with me as I work to come up with new excuses every night as to why I don’t need my shot. And I do feel bad about the many, many times I’ve blamed her, or accused her of enjoying the process of stabbing me with a needle, just to possibly make her feel bad and let me get out of it. She’s resilient though and it’s never worked.

So, for 5 days after chemo we go through the motions. The drug comes in individual vials that have to be kept in the fridge so we take it out at least an hour before giving it me so it can warm up, cold injections are very painful. About an hour or so after its been sitting on the counter we start to bicker about whether or not its time for me take my shot. She is in the “pro-shot” camp, and I am firmly in the “anti-shot” party. She quickly grows tired of this game and will eventually wander upstairs to the bathroom to start preparing the shot.

She gets a syringe, opens it up and draws the contents of the now room temperature vile into the syringe.  At this point, her tone changes and I know that I can no longer avoid the invitable. With my tail between legs I go up to the bathroom and accept my fate.

Throughout the week we work our way through a series of 4 injection sites. The back of each arm, and fatty area around my hips (or love-handles if you will). After a discussion about where the shot is going tonight she uses an alcohol swab to sterilize the area and then she pushes the syringe in. Before pushing in the plunger and injecting the medication she has to pull back on the plunger to check for blood return. By this she is just to double checking that she isn’t injecting it into a vein, as apparently that would be bad. Assuming all is well, she pushes it in.

Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn’t. it’s about half and half. Even after several months we can’t really seem to figure out why sometimes the injection is painless and sometimes it really hurts when its going in. Not the needle, its pretty small, but the actually injection of the medication. At any rate, it happens, the needle comes out and I get a little bandaid put on the injection site. Then I’m done for another day.

As many of you already know, Christine is amazing. I don’t know how I would handle having to give her a shot everyday and she handles it like a champ. I’m not an easy person to deal with it comes to something like this, something that I don’t want to do, and I HAVE NOT made it easy for her. Its just one of the many reasons why I love her.

2 more shots for this round. Then 3 more rounds of chemo… so 17 more injections… though maybe I won’t have to do the shots after my last chemo appointment, so it may only be 12!

Either way, it’s too many. I’m certainly not going to miss the shots.

Scar Tissue

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We were surprised on Thursday to see that the pictures from my most recent CT Scan were not that different from the ones taken two months ago. There was a slight reduction in size, but there is still somewhat of a mass in my chest. Apparently it will be a little souvenir that I will carry around with me for the rest of my life. The oncologist described it as  hard fiberous scar tissue. A lovely thought.

The PT Scan later next month with confirm that it’s scar tissue as well as help determine whether or not I’ll be undergoing radiation therapy after I’ve finished chemo. There are two schools of thought according to my oncologist. One is that additional radiation therapy should be administered after chemo if the tumor was larger than 5 cm. The other is if the tumor was larger than 7 cm. Mine was about 6 cm, so we’ll probably have some kind of consultation with a radiation oncologist to see what they say, though we would like to avoid having to go through radiation if at all possible.

More on that as it develops.