Previous Status Reports Here's the Latest... Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone! It's time for yet another fun filled update on the health of yours truly! It's been a bit of a long month, but things seem to be looking
up on this end of it.Chemos #10 and #11 were scheduled for this month, on November 5th and 19th, respectively. The November 5th treatment went quite smoothly, though once again, the after effects have been increasingly difficult. Along with the ever prolonged fatigue and weakness, my shortness of breath problems became a real problem after treatment #9. Usually I would experience shortness of breath for a few days after treatment, but then it would clear up. Between treatments #9 and #10, however, the shortness of breath never went away. In fact, it seemed to get worse as time went on. Since I also have a touch of asthma which was aggravated by the chemo, I ended up feeling like I couldn't breath too well. So when I went in for treatment #10, I mentioned this to my oncology nurse as she was prepping my meds. She was concerned, and tracked down my doctor.
The doc spoke to me for a bit, and then told me that they were going to take me off one of the chemo drugs, namely, Bleomycin, which is a drug known to cause potential lung damage. He said chronic shortness of breath is the first sign of a potential problem, so it would be better to just remove this drug from my regimen from here on out. He said that any permanent lung damage will typically show up as scar tissue on CT or gallium scans, and that he would hear a crackling sound in my lungs. He heard no such sound, and my scans that had been done several weeks prior looked clear. So he was confident that without the bleo, the problem would clear up on it's own, though he warned me it could take up to a month to see an improvement.
Well, I certainly wasn't complaining about receiving one less nasty drug. The doc was also not concerned that removing bleo at this point would pose any kind of concern for my outcome, since my scans already came back without any signs of disease. Mostly these last three cycles are for "insurance" purposes. So I came through treatment #10 with the usual effects, which take longer to clear up these days, but do clear up eventually. I finally started feeling well enough a week and a half after treatment to go out with a friend for a few hours on Sunday afternoon.
It gets a bit crazy being in the house all the time, and so when I can get out for a bit, I like to do so. However, this last venture and
its consequences have made me think twice about such things. Basically, it was a gorgeous day, and my friend Elizabeth and I went out for brunch and then to an open art gallery event which was attended by several hundred people. We were out for all of four hours, and though its wasn't like going to the mall or anything, we did encounter quite a few people. Anyway, we had a really good time and I went home feeling fine. However, about 9 PM, I suddenly felt exhausted and went right to bed (this is really unsual for me, since even when sick I tend to go to bed late and get up late!)I slept for about 14 hours, and when I woke up, I had a 100 degree temperature. I called my doc, and he decided to put me on antibiotics as a precautionary measure. I went back to bed and started feeling progressively worse. It turns out that I had picked up a particlarly nasty case of the flu! Now, I had a flu shot this year, and I
actually think the shot helped keep this flu to a lower level than it might have been otherwise, but it was still NO fun. It also appears from talking to others in the area who had this same bug that this was one of those "lingering" kinds. Well, I got worse for four days despite the antibiotics (it was clearly a viral flu!) By Thursday, I was so weak I could hardly get out of bed, and making it up and down the stairs in my house was a huge effort. My shortness of breath problem had been aggravated so much by the flu that I would gasp for breath after climbing 5 or 6 stairs.Needless to say, this all made me very unhappy and depressed. I went to see the doc on Wednesday, and he wanted to postpone my chemo (scheduled for that Thursday) for a week. I protested that I didn't want to be thrown that far off schedule and asked if we could do it
Monday instead. He agreed, as long as I felt well enough by then. I again brought up my shortness of breath concerns and he again listened to my lungs and said they sounded clear and that I shouldn't worry. (What, me worry? Ha!)Fortunately, by Friday, I had slowly started feeling better again. However, the whole thing had weakened me so much that come Monday, I called and postponed my chemo to the following Friday. Not only did I need the extra time to recuperate, but I realized that having chemo on Monday would make me one sick pup on Thanksgiving Day, which is the last thing I wanted. So despite the fact that this postponement threw me off schedule by a week, by Tuesday I was feeling vastly improved, and by Thursday well enough to really enjoy the holiday. The BEST part of my recent improvement is that my shortness of breath problem has improved dramatically. It's even less of a problem now than it was before I got the flu! So I am very encouraged by this and would like to kiss my doc for being right.
Thanksgiving turned out really nice. We had it here, and my Mom came out from Nashua, and my friend Lyn joined us for dinner. Then after dinner a few more friends came over for football and dessert. We had a delicious dinner which was a nice group effort, and an overall good time. It was one of the best Thanksgivings I can remember in recent years. So I didn't even get too depressed about the prospect of having treatment the next day!
But Friday finally rolled around, and it was time for treatment #11. The best thing about this treatment was that once it was over, I could say I only have ONE more treatment! So I was anxious to get it over with. Well, my Mom and I went down to the clinic at 10, and my nurse Trish started with the usual routine of flushing my port and looking for a blood return to take some blood and do my counts. Well, the old port was clogged again! This has not occurred at all for my last two cycles, so it was a bit surprising and irritating, to say the least. She did all the usual things to try and clear it, including putting roto-rooter in it and making us wait for an hour for it to work. When she came back to try it again, we all sat there anxiously looking for the blood return, but none came. I finally reached up and poked at the spot on my neck where the port tube enters my neck vein and pushed on it a couple of times. Voila! Blood started flowing out of the port. We all shouted "YAY!!!" just as a doctor was walking by, causing him to laugh. The alternative would have been to put more roto-rooter in and send my home for 24 hours. This worked once before, but I really didn't want ANY more delays at that point.
So my blood counts looked good, and we went ahead with my treatment. We also scheduled my LAST treatment for December 10th, and ordered my last round of Neupogen. One sad thing that happened was that we found out my regular nurse, Trish, is not going to be there for my last treatment. So we had to say goodbye to her yesterday. I was suprised at how sad I was to say goodbye to her! She has been really great to me and is a wonderful nurse with a great sense of humor. You don't realize how you get attached to people like that sometimes. Anyway, she gave me a big hug, looked me in the eye and said "I never want to see you back in here again!" I laughed and promised her she wouldn't unless it was just to pop in and say "hi" after a doctor visit. It's true that if I never see the inside of that chemo room after my last treatment, I will be a happy camper. However, I will miss those wonderful nurses despite that. They are great people doing an amazing job.
So here I am, one day post treatment, really thrilled at the prospect of only one more treatment ahead of me! As I said, my last treatment is on December 10th, and I basically plan to stay in my house or maybe just go out for a few dog walks until then. I do not want to risk going out in public again and catching something! Fortunately, I can do a lot of work from home, plus I just got a generous chunk of sick time from my union's sick leave bank that I can use between now and the end of February, so I don't have to worry about running out of time at work. It's actually great that I can work at home though, because I think I would go bonkers sitting around the house if I didn't have anything productive to do!
As for what's ahead of me, I have quite a bit of research and decision making to do once my chemo treatment is done. I'll be getting new sets of scans, going out to Dana Farber again, meeting with my radiation doc again, doing a lot of research on radiation and deciding things like - how much radiation do I want? where on my body? who do I want giving it to me? etc. I may do it here at Bay State, or I may even move in with my grandmother for a month and do it in Boston. It will all depend on what seems best for me, and I have lots of information to gather before then in order to decide. If all goes
smoothly, I expect that I will start radiation in mid-January, and that it will go to mid-February. It'll be 5 days a week for a month, or something to that effect. So though chemo will be over, I will still have a bit of road ahead of me before I can say I am FINISHED! Thus, I'm working on cultivating that elusive quality - patience! I think I'm getting better at it...Well, that's all for now everyone. Thanks again for all your kind wishes and support. They mean the world to me, as do all of you.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Carpe Diem
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Sunday
2:41 PM
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