One less thing “needling” at Brian

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Stine here. Tuesday night marked a momentous occasion in the Lange house, as Brian had his last neupogen shot! Back in early February, he talked about how this is one thing he will absolutely not miss.

In October, we were given the large sharps box by the pharmacist, because he needed one shot per day for 5 days after each chemo session. He will have had 12 rounds of chemo when it’s all done, and he didn’t have shots after the first, and he won’t have any after the last. By Brian’s calculations (because I’m not so good with math), he had 50 shots:

Sorry I couldn't get a "sharper" picture. =)

That’s a lot of shots. It feels like it was more than 50, simply because it was spread out over such a long period of time. I feel like it was years ago when I was given a tutorial by the kind nurse.

You can see the syringes through the plastic, with my thumb as a reference for size. That's a lot of shots poor Brian had to put up with.

Tuesday night was a happy night in our house as we put the last needle in the sharps box. One more thing checked off the list, and just one more chemo session left to go! I’m glad I get to stop being a “prick” by forcing the sick guy with cancer to get shots he doesn’t like. For someone who doesn’t work in the medical profession, it’s an interesting skill to have. But I’ll be happy if I never have to give another shot again. =)

Starting the long climb back to the top

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Today at the gym I shot around for a little bit and it got me excited. This is an action shot that I took myself today. Not great, but it’s harder than you’d think to take a picture of yourself shooting a basketball:

It was terrible, and I was winded just moving around shooting the ball, but it none the less got me excited for my inevitable return to the weekly game!

“The Sunset League” as we’ve now taken to calling it, was started as a random idea back in February of 2008. I have a couple of friends who are teachers, and they got permission to use their gyms for some basketball. So for the last 3 years, more often than not, Saturday mornings at 7am, you’ll find 6-8 of us in a school gym, getting together to play basketball for 2-3 hours. On the list of things that I’ve missed not being able to do because of my illness, this ranks right up there.

I can’t stress enough how much I have missed going for the last 6 months, but I just knew it wouldn’t be a good idea. Even on my off week I just wasn’t in a position to be physically pushing myself up and down the court.

But as excited as I am to get back at it, I’m pretty anxious about it too. I just told the guys on our email thread (after staying silent for the last 6 months!) that I’ll need another month or so before I can come back. After all, I’m currently the heaviest I have EVER been, and I’m in the worst shape of my life.

I’m working on it though. I tried several times to get myself to workout on a regular basis during treatment, but it just took so much out of me that it hardly seemed worth it. I just couldn’t keep it up. Now however, as we countdown to the end, it feels different and I have no doubt that this is the actual start of me reclaiming my body, my health, my fitness, and my life.

My body has been ravaged by cancer, poisoned by drugs, and I’ve allowed it to slip away into a unfit form unlike I’ve ever seen it or known it before. I think as far as my physical fitness and health goes, this is rock bottom. So its all looking up from here!

In about a month I look forward to blogging about my first game back. I’ll be a few pounds lighter, in better shape that I am now, but with still a long way to go. I’ll have just gotten my ASS kicked all morning long, but I’ll be happy! It will mark a milestone for sure, a true marker for me that I made it through. I can’t wait!

In!

HairGROWTH Part I

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Ever since I was taken off of the bleomycin due to lung damage back in early January, my hair has slowly started growing again. Well… kind of… and only in certain places.

Where its most noticeable is on the top of my head. It’s slowly coming back in, though not quite as thick as “normal” hair growth yet. And what is coming back in is pretty fine and soft. The color is also much redder than it’s been in years. I was a red head growing up and still thought of myself as one, but as I’ve discovered in the last few months (as people have noticed my redder hair growing back) is that many people who have only known me for a few years, think of me as having brownish hair. For the record, my resume says “auburn” I think that covers it well. Though if this continues, I may have to change it back to “red.”

Along with the color, it’s also coming back so far much softer and finer than it was before. I basically feel like it’s reverting to an earlier state. The physiological equivalent of curling up into a ball, sucking its thumb, and reverting back to an earlier form of itself. In this case it’s going back to an infantile state since its as soft and fine, and as red, as when I was a baby.

I never completely lost the hair on my lower arms, but I did lose the hair on my legs. It’s very hard to see, but in the right lighting you can see little sprouts of hair starting to come back on legs, but for the most part they are still smooth.

The place that is has started growing back through is my chin. Not on my face, but just from the bottom of the chin to the top of the neck.

Artist

The rest of my facial hair is still MIA. Not that I could ever grow it in the first place. But still, even in my prime I would have to shave every other day or so or I would start to look pretty scraggly and gross. Not anymore though. I think I’ve maybe picked up my razor 3 times in the last 6 months.

I am really curious to see how it will take for the rest of my hair follicles to wake up after my last chemo on THURSDAY (!!!)

I could really use some eyebrows.

Last Blood Draw

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Every two weeks, on the day before chemo, I go in for a blood draw. Today is the last one!

Yes, it’s possible that I may have to go in again before we see the doctor in two weeks, but still, it feels like a milestone.

One of the cool things about getting results online is that I can see all of the results going back. There is even a function to make a graph:

The first point on the graph was the blood draw that I had after my first meeting with Dr. Dodge, September 13th. That was he uttered the words that I’ll never forget “I don’t see any reason to sugar coat this: I believe you non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma” (HA! Joke was on him, he was WRONG it was Hodgkin’s!). Before leaving the office he sent me for a blood draw, my white blood cell (WBC) count was 13.2, the “standard range” for WBC’s is between 4.0 – 10.7. (fun fact: the numbers are in K/ul which I believe stands for “Thousand per Unit”)

The second point on the graph was the blood draw that I had before my first chemo and it came in at a respectable 10.7. Then, well, you can see for yourself how I reacted to my first chemo treatment, 2 weeks later I my WBC had RECOVERED all the way back up to 1.5.

From then on I began taking the injections, and you can see from the chart that from then on my WBC generally hovered around the low end of what a normal count should be.

The shots SUCKED. I hated having to do them. But they worked.

Anyway, I just thought the graph was neat. It’s one way to have documented the journey.

OH, and Happy Anniversary to my parents. 37 years!

Today’s the Day

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I can hardly believe it, but today is my LAST chemo appointment.

I don’t even really know what to say about it other than that.

Note that even in my joy I’m hesitant to make any sweeping claims like “Its over” or “I’m done with treatment.” This is certainly a big milestone and I will most definitely be celebrating as it such, but the realist in me is keen to not get too celebratory yet. There are still several things to get through in the coming weeks, and I’ll touch on what are those as we go. But for now, I’m trying to just be glad that this chapter is coming to an end.

Still, I’ll have to go through the same recovery period that I always do. I can this going one of two ways: it will either be easiest or one of the hardest. Easiest in the sense that I know I won’t have to go back, and that it’s only uphill from here. Yet, it could be hard in the sense that my patience with this process has grown thin, especially since I’m wanting to be working toward recovery and getting back to where I was before I got sick. So you can see how it could go either way, either I won’t mind the downs since I won’t have to go through them again, OR I’ll REALLY hate the limitations it puts on me because I can’t wait until I can start getting better.

So think of us today! We’ll be going in at 1pm and it generally takes around 2-3 hours. So by 4 o’clock I’ll be able say “Back when I was going through chemo…”

And on the plus side, now I’ll have something to drink to on every St. Patrick’s Day for the rest of my life!

Anyway, I’m not really good at expressing excitement, either in person or in print, so I’ll leave the super-excited post for Christine to write for tomorrow.