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.

Happy Birthday to ME!

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Today is my 29th birthday.

In the past I have never really been the kind of the person who really cared much about his birthday. I guess I always figured that everyone has one, so what’s so special about it. Of course my perspective has changed a little this year. But even now I’m still not as outwardly excited and fired up for celebration as one might be. Still, I certainly have a new respect and appreciation for it that I’ve never had before =)

I’ve been anticipating and thinking about this day a lot actually. From the beginning even:

I was diagnosed on a Monday, and Christine went back to work on a Thursday. We’d spent two days together just sitting in shock from the news and after two full days decided that since there was nothing to be done and nothing to be gained by sitting and feeling sorry for ourselves, she should go back to work and that we should try to resume some form of normalcy in our lives.

I got up that morning and started going through the motions. For me that’s breakfast while watching The Today Show. I hadn’t been up very long when this commercial came on:

I lost my shit.

I mean, I broke. I was immediately turned into a crying, sobbing mess. I thought I was done with crying and that after a few days I was starting to be okay, but I was wrong. I somehow resisted the urge to call Christine, but I didn’t have to resist very long as she called me shortly there after. Through tears I asked her to come home. I believe my exact words were: “I’m not ready to be alone.”

She came home and I think we spent the rest of the day just as we had spent the previous days, sitting together in disbelief. But sitting together, none the less.

I think about that moment, when I was blindsided by that commercial, quite often. In fact I’ve thought about it any time there has been mention of my birthday since. For me it was one of the earliest moments when I began to realize what a game changer this was going to be, and what an effect it was going to have on the rest of my life. Suddenly something as simple as a birthday now meantsomething. It wasn’t just a given. It’s not a guarantee.

There I was, on the couch crying my eyes out because of what was happening to me, but also crying because I was looking forward to having another birthday. I was looking forward to turning 29, and to getting older, because for the first time in my life I was realizing that the next birthday is not a sure thing.

I allowed myself to imagine a party of some kind (an idea I’d never been too keen on in the past) where I was surrounded by friends and family, none of whom we had even told at that point (it would still be another week and half before we started telling the world). I imagined myself thanking everyone for their support and for sticking by us during the ordeal that we had just been through. And most importantly, for the first time I imagined myself healthy. At the time we were told to expect 3-4 months of treatment, so my birthday was originally to time out well for a big celebration that I had beat cancer.

Of course, things changed a little bit. I’m not quite on the other side of this yet like I thought at the time I would be, but I’m still happier than I think I ever have been that it’s my birthday. I’ve never been one to embrace it with celebration before, so I think I’ll just take this chance to say, for the first time: “Happy Birthday to Me!”

I deserve it.

Here’s to a world with more birthdays!

One month left

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Yesterday was Brian’s chemo day, and now that it’s over, he has exactly one month left. That means he has two more trips to chemo, and then he’s done on March 17.

That’s great news, but yesterday was tough because Brian is more than ready to be done. Normally, he’s quite the gregarious treat for everyone on staff. Even when he is having a rough chemo day, he’s always funny and a friendly face for all of the nurses. Yesterday, he was his usual gracious self, but it was apparent that he was more than ready to be out of there quickly.

I don’t blame him one bit.

Oddly, yesterday was the first time that he felt really nauseous during chemo. He has not thrown up at all during this whole process since his diagnosis in September, but yesterday he came darn close to breaking that streak. After the moment passed, Brian remarked that his state of mind and the way he was reacting physically were probably connected. He was probably right. It’s amazing to think that the mind-body connection is that powerful.

The good news, is that he didn’t seem to react as badly to the chemo yesterday as he has in previous sessions. Instead of falling asleep half way through, then sleeping all the way home, and going to bed around 6, he actually stayed awake the whole time and seemed fairly lucid.

So, we continue the countdown, and know that in exactly one month he will be through it. On March 17, the days will be 1 hour and 28 minutes longer than they are today, the average temperatures will be in the mid-to upper 50’s, and Brian’s long-term outlook will be decidedly sunnier. =)