Another one bites the dust

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One more round of chemo is done! Now, we just have to get Brian through the next week of side effects. So far, so good. As I write this, it’s nearly 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night, and Brian is already more alert than he was after the last round of chemo. He stayed awake through the entire treatment, and he only took cat naps on the way home and after he got to the couch, which is an improvement on the three solid days of sleep he experienced last time.

With the extra week of rest he had due to his low white blood cell count, he was in good spirits and was feeling good today when we arrived at the hospital.

Second verse, same as the first...

This time, I came prepared with the tools to try to help him get ahead of the mouth sores he experienced on Saturday and Sunday after his last chemo session. Thanks to the help of Google and the amazing people who commented on this blog previously (thanks, everyone!), I came prepared with the following potential solutions:

  • He sucked on ice chips during almost the entire infusion, and the nurses seemed to think there was enough anecdotal evidence to support that this might help him come the weekend.
  • I bought him Manuka honey, and when we got home, I had him hold a spoon full in his mouth to get ahead of the sores. I’ll repeat this again tomorrow morning and afternoon.
  • We refilled his Maylox-Benadryl-Lidocane mouth wash prescription so that if the sores do show up, he won’t have to wait for me to fill the prescription to get relief.
  • I bought him the following ingredients for a smoothie:

organic pear juice
frozen sliced banana
organic berries strawberries
green supplement powder
maca powder
flax oil
The Herbalist Renew-U Tonic
The Herbalist Rasayana Rejuvenating Tonic

I brought all of the supplement ingredients with me to the doctor’s office so they could review them and ensure that they wouldn’t cause any adverse reaction with the medications he is on. They cleared them all for use, so I will start giving him the smoothie tomorrow.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the combination of all these things will make the mouth sores less intense and shorter this time!

It’s almost 7, so I’m going to sign off to watch “Storm Chasers” on the Discovery Channel. It’s October, which means I’m more storm-obsessed than any other time of year. For those of you who are interested, shoot me an email and I’ll fill you in on the weather stats we observed from my weather station during the storm earlier in the week. I’ll spare the rest of you from these details. =)

Spooky Things to Come?

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Hi folks! Stine here. Brian went to bed before blogging, and tossed me the keys to the blog again.

Because we had our Halloween party last weekend, it feels like the holiday is over. This whole week has seemed like super-bonus -Halloween-week, because it’s my favorite holiday. That means fun spooky things are definitely to come this weekend as we gear up for trick-or-treaters and the “Running Scared 5K” to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma society.

It also means that more seriously spooky things may be ahead as Brian progresses after Wednesday’s chemo treatment. So far, so good; he has just had the anticipated fatigue and easily-controlled nausea/unsettled stomach. As we get into Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we hope that his mouth sores won’t make a major appearance, and his general achey-ness will stay away.

However, in order to avoid a delay in the next chemo treatment like we had last week, they have put him on a medication that will boost his white blood cell count.

I want to take a moment to state how impressed I am with modern medical technology. It is amazing that we, as humans, can recognize, diagnose, and treat cancer, and that we have treatments to ease the side-effects of the treatments. I never cease to be amazed by human ingenuity and expanding medical knowledge. Things that would have killed us just a few years ago are no longer a death sentence, and the treatments are always improving. To those in the medical field – thanks for doing what you do!

As I was saying before that tangent, he will be on a new medication starting tomorrow to boost his white blood cells. Unfortunately, this medication needs to be injected just below the skin, and it causes “bone aches”. We aren’t quite sure what that means, but I guess we’ll find out after we head to the clinic tomorrow to learn how to do the daily injections ourselves at home. I’m glad I decided to accent the red tile in the bathroom instead of ripping it out, because now our “sharp needle receptacle” box will blend right in!

Should I put white trim around it?See? Blends right in!

Run Scared 5K

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Yesterday was Halloween and the Run Scared 5K to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. There were over 600 participants and the event raised over $14,000. Our team had quite the crew. We were 37 strong with 2 babies, and 5 dogs!

Fortunately I’ve been feeling great this weekend (much better than after my first round of chemo) so I was able to fully participate. Though in the interest of full disclosure I should say that a few of us walkers took the shortcut and probably did closer to 2 or 2.5 miles rather than the full 3.1. What can I say?  It was a big hill, and it felt pretty optional for those of us just there for a casual walk.

Many pics from the morning courtesy of my father-in-law Don:

Why am I including this picture?

I like that Pepper is mid-shake

Denny had the best pet costume in our group

Just about to start

The exciting start!

The

The exciting photo finish

Not just walkers, Delene (in white) probably placed 2nd

Tanya

The Fam

The Firefighter

It was great to see so many people from all aspects of my life coming together to join my family on this little walk/run to support cancer research.

Thanks also to Tanya who coordinated everything. A strong showing indeed everyone!

We returned home and my dad helped Christine scrape up what was left of the pumpkins decorating our stoop. They’ve served us well for the last 2 weeks, but sadly they were just a little too past their prime and have taken to collapsing, rotting, leaking and attracting flies for the last few days. So sadly they had to go so as to not scare children away or cause them to slip on rotting pumpkin juices.

Christine cranked out a few replacement Jack-a-lanterns before Tanya joined us for the evening to watch some Beetlejuice and greet Trick-or-Treaters alongside our traditional Halloween dinner of tacos.

Shots… but not in the good Las Vegas way

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I mentioned yesterday that this round of chemo has been nothing compared to the first one that we experienced. I’ve had energy and didn’t spend the first two days just sleeping like I did before. I don’t know what the difference has been, but we have a few theories.

Before my first round of chemo I was really sick. My cancer symptoms (cough, fever, fatigue, etc.) were pretty acute and so I was in tough shape both going in and coming out of chemo. So it’s pretty understandable that it was such a rough transition. The other thing that may be contributing to my better health this week is the extra “bonus” third week of recovery that I had due to my low white blood cell count which delayed my next chemo session by one week.

Working theories also include the fact that I was sucking on ice chips during the chemo treatment, the fact that I ate a special smoothie with mouth sore preventing amazing things in it, and/or the manuka honey spoonfulls I ate every few hours in the days after chemo. The mouth sores have definitely been much better after this chemo session than last. (Thanks everyone for their suggestions of these remedies)

Because my white blood cell count was so slow to recover after my initial treatment, my doctor has put me on a new prescription. As Christine mentioned in a previous post, the new medicine comes in the form of an injection that I have to receive daily for the first 5 days after chemo. It’s a sub-cutaneous injection which means that it needs to go in under the skin but not into veins or muscles. That leaves fat, of which I don’t have much. Or at least I don’t have much of it in places that I can reach myself. So it’s Nurse Stine to the rescue!

The pharmacist gave us a quick overview of our supplies (the viles, the syringes, the antiseptic wipes, and the “sharps box” for used needles) but she recommended that we head over to Injections to see if they could give us some further teaching, and indeed they could. One brave technician even let Stine inject her with a saline solution while she talked her through it the first time. I couldn’t believe it!

That just happened.

After injecting saline into a complete stranger (with permission), Stine injected me my with first dose.

I was very brave, so I got stickers afterward:

Superman Stickers

It’s been a few days now of receiving daily injections from Nurse Stine, and I must say that she is doing an amazing job. It’s not something I would want to do have to do to her everyday.

The side effect of these injections? Sore bones. It’s kind of hard to describe what this feels like, but it’s almost like my bones are brittle. There is general discomfort, but when I touch myself anywhere or brush up against something it feels like I have a deep bruise. It’s weird. This side effect is combined with the general muscle pain and soreness from the chemo treatment, so I see lots of Tylenol and many a warm bath in my future this week. Christine has used this an opportunity to reinstate her never-ending campaign for a hot tub.

Chest Port Installation

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When the nurse called last week to tell me about my new prescription she also let me know that the doctor had finally cleared me for my chest port. I’m not sure what, if anything, has changed, but for some reason they’ve decided to move forward with it at this time. If you don’t remember, I was originally supposed to have it put in before my first chemo treatment, but an initial blood test indicated that my blood doesn’t clot normally and that I might be a bit of a hemophiliac. Apparently that was enough to cause them to think twice about sticking a semi-permanent tube into the largest vein in my body. But I guess that they’ve decided to move forward with it before the chemo treatments damage the smaller veins in my hands and forearms.

Like most new things, I’m pretty nervous about having it put in. Mostly just because I’ll have this extra little bump sticking out of my chest for 6 months, but I’ve been told that I’ll quickly get used to it and that in the long run I’ll appreciate having it.The unit is about the size of a quarter and is maybe 3/4 of an inch thick. It’s installed just under the skin and connects to a catheter which will run into one of the larger pulmonary (I think) veins in my chest. Then, when it’s time for chemo they simply plug-in and go!

That part will be a welcome change as there have been difficulties starting an IV both times that I’ve had chemo so far. Both times they tried to start it in my hands, and both times the first person had to call in for backup. This last round they wound up going into a vein near my wrist.

Hopefully, a thing of the past

When I asked why they don’t just go into the vein in the arm (where they take blood draws from and where you normally see IV’s put in) they said it was because they like to “preserve” those veins whenever they can. Like I said, the reason they do chest ports is because these drugs are powerful, and for the lack of a better term, they are corrosive and can damage these smaller veins. So when possible they like to put chemo into a large vein in the chest where it won’t do as much damage.

So, the tentative plan is to have the procedure done next Wednesday a few hours before my next chemo treatment. I’m still waiting for the follow-up call to schedule the appointment, but I’m pretty sure that this will be happening. We are also meeting with the oncologist again on that day, so next Wednesday is shaping up to be a pretty big day!

In happy news, I’m done with my injections for this round! We’ll find out after my next blood test on Tuesday whether or not my white blood cell count was indeed boosted and if it was worth it!