Today:

Today is a good day.
Today is the last day of my cancer treatment.
A journey which started back with my diagnosis on September 13th, 2010 (a date which will live in infamy) will end today after over 6 months of chemotherapy and 3 weeks of radiation.

There will be follow-up appointments over the next few months of course, and my first quarterly CT Scan is scheduled for the beginning of July. I’ll have a CT Scan every 3 months for a year. Then every 4 months for year. Then every 6 months for a year. And if I make it that far without signs that it’s come back, it will be pretty safe to say at that point that I am cured.

It all starts with Today!
Today is a good day.

Tomorrow:

Tomorrow will be a rough day.
Tomorrow is the first day of Pepper’s cancer treatment.

It’s possible I’m being a bit over dramatic and speculative as we don’t for sure yet that it’s full on cancer, but we do know that she most likely has a tumor. Technically at this point they can only say that it’s “a mass” but I’m just trying to prepare myself for the worst.

She is scheduled for surgery in the morning and the mass will be removed. It will then be shipped out to somewhere where they will take a closer look and determine what it is/was and those results will dictate what our next steps are.

For now though, we have to get her through the surgery. We just wish we could explain to her what is about to happen and why its happening. But try as we might, we can’t get her understand English, and she just looks at me like I’m crazy when I try to bark.

It all starts tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be a rough day.

Pepper toyed with the idea of eating and drinking again on Thursday. She flirted with it. Dipped her toe into the lake if you will. Still it’s a good sign that we moving in the right direction again.

Unfortunately the plan (and so it goes with cancer treatment) is to get her to a place where we think she’s healthy enough we can give her chemo again and smack her back down a few pegs.

They gave us the pills to give her once we get word from the Vet to do so. They are covered with warning labels to wear gloves while handling. In fact it says to wear 2 pairs of gloves… and this is what we will be feeding to our dog.

It’s quite reminiscent of my own chemo treatments. Only in my case the protocols for self-protection that the nurses going through were much more stringent. Also, they were injecting the drugs directly into my veins.

Dacarbazine (the D in ABVD) seemed to be the drug where they took the most caution. Unlike most of the other drugs they didn’t administer it in an IV drip. They pushed it in slowly and manually. It came in a big syringe and was the color of bright red death. They called it the Red Devil.

Before giving the dacarbazine the nurse would put an extra pair of gloves over the ones they wore standard, added eye protection, and then put on a full “arms in first” plastic gown. When the nurse who was a few months pregnant did it, she even went beyond that and had some kind of protective lead vest (like you get at the dentist during x-rays) over her abdomen. She was pretty much ready to diffuse a bomb.

Apparently if this leaks out of the syringe, or the vein, there is trouble and it will quickly and painfully scar and kill any tissues that it comes in contact with. So you know, they would inject a half-pint of this stuff into me every 2 weeks for 6 months.

But I digress.

Pepper SEEMS to be slowly coming out of whatever this latest episode was all about.

Before I go, I want to share this series of stock photos that I came across when I did a Google Image search for giving chemo injections when I was looking for a possible picture of the levels of protection the nurses used. I didn’t find a good one, but these images came up a few times and they were too good not to share. I like how several times the nurse becomes the patient!

Also I feel like this image also really sums up my experience:

Today we should hear something from the Vet regarding the CT Scan that Pepper had on Wednesday. Hopefully it will tell us something about what is going on and why she still seems reluctant to move her head too much.

This weekend she did start to eat and drink, but still not as much as we would like to see. Then again, she isn’t really active so I wouldn’t think that she would need too much food. But I also think that part of the reason she isn’t active is because she isn’t eating too much. It’s a vicious cycle.

In other CT Scan news, today I go in for my first “every 3 month” scan. So it’s been 3 months. Crazy.

This one should be a “gimme.” From what I understand the chances of relapse happening this soon are ridiculously low. And the fact that the disease responded to chemo so well in me pushes those chances down even further. Still, there is that little bit of me that’s nervous… because, what if?

I think about “What if” alot. Every little tinge of a past symptom that I had freaks me out a little. If I cough… or if one of my ankles itch… or if I just feel tired at the end of the day… my mind starts to wander and I panic a little that I’m getting sick again. From what I hear, this paranoia is common and will dissipate with time.

But still…

I may hear back as early as this afternoon. But it could also be a few days. Either way we have a follow-up visit with my oncologist on Friday. She’s going to give me a disapproving look when she sees that I haven’t lost much weight since going off my meds. BUT I was going to gym 5 days a week for 2 weeks straight, so there’s that … well at least I was until Pepper got really sick last week.

I’ll update tomorrow (or maybe this evening if we know anything). And Mom, before you get mad and start freaking out: I’ll be sure to let you know AS SOON as I hear my results =)

‘Till then.

Had my CT Scan yesterday and haven’t heard anything from the doctor yet.

It’s funny where my mind goes. I’ve already decided that “no news, is bad news” and that she hasn’t called because she wants to tell me in person on Friday that it’s back. Really there is no reason for me to be having these crazy thoughts.

I think I just got spoiled when she called mere hours after my PT Scan in March to let me know it was clean. Really though, I should realize that they are totally different tests. The PT Scan results are pretty easy to see. If there are glowing bright spots where there shouldn’t be, you have cancer. Done.

I’m assuming though that reading this CT Scan will require a little more finesse and that it will need to be done by a radiologist. I would imagine it involves taking this image and comparing it to earlier pictures, especially since I have scar tissue from the tumor in my chest. So they will probably be looking at that closely and … blah … blah … blah … JUST CALL ME ALREADY !!!!!@@

Calm. Be calm. Just be cool.

No word from Pepper’s vet either. Though she continues to improve little by little everyday. She’s eating more and doing little things like starting to follow us around the house a bit more, rather than just laying there unresponsive, like she did for about a week.

As I’m typing this in fact, she’s following Christine around in the backyard while she does some “night gardening.” It’s about 10:15 PM and I’m sitting on the back deck with the laptop ’cause it’s so pleasant out and she is putting a new plant into our deck planters. Pepper is showing interest in things again and its such a relief to see. She’s still walking softly, but she’s doing it more often.

That’s all for now. Sorry I don’t have much to update on like I thought I would. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, lets all make fun of Stine who has Jury Duty today. She is NOT amused. Hehe.