Memorial Day Weekend Update

I have successfully gotten through my 4th round of chemo.  The 4th and 5th days were long, slow, and anxiety producing since being on a hospital bed for 6 hours a day getting pumped full of various fluids was getting to me.  I've been pretty tired and really low appetite the last few days.  I started getting back into things today with a series of events with my mom and sister Tracy being in town.  We made the customary trip to the Arch, and things started turning for the better around lunch.  Anna joined us for a trip down to the Schlafly Taproom for a pig roast/garage sale.  Surprising enough I didn't have much of a problem getting down my pulled pork sandwich and beans which was a big change of pace from the chicken noodle soup I'd been thriving on the few days during chemo.  We spent half the afternoon at the zoo which was pretty manageable too.  Tracy was complaining more than me about being tired from walking around so I consider that a good afternoon of exercise.  Unfortunately walking is about the most strenuous exercise I'll be doing until after I recover from surgery.  Half due to fatigue and half to my lack of confidence in my cancer ridden vertebrae which is marked for removal.  My scans next week should prove very interesting both to that bone's integrity and how well chemo has been working so far.

My pelvic tumor ablation is also quickly approaching.  I met with my interventional radiologist on Thursday, and it was very informational.  First of all, Jack Jennings (the good doctor) is a very interesting and intense guy.  He strongly reinforced that my team is treating my cancer "very aggressively" and that they're going to "watch me like a hawk" as I proceed through treatment.  He told me to text or call him with any questions any time of day and will probably be walking me through my scan results over the phone Tuesday after his plane lands in Italy for a conference he's attending.  Secondly, I now know how the ablation will go.  Jack will be using heat ablation using a radio frequency needle instead of freezing the tumors which is what they were thinking at first.  They can be more accurate with the bendable heat needle than with making ice balls.  It's a little safer for my nerves too since I will be semi-sedated and will be able to alert him if I'm getting shooting pains down my leg. Ice ablation would numb the nerve so that I wouldn't feel the damage happening.  Jack isn't concerned about nerve damage with my procedure, but I'm happy playing it on the safe side.  Another benefit of heat over ice is that I can go home that afternoon instead of being admitted for a day for pain monitoring.  

The procedure is minimally invasive with only two small nicks in my ass for the instruments to get access to my tumors.  It will be CT guided so that he will have a very accurate and real time view to the areas that he is ablating.  Jack said he would be doing multiple ablutions over the whole area where my tumors were at my last MRI to get any little pockets which might not be visible in my upcoming scans which will likely show a reduced tumor size (knock on wood).  I'm hoping for the best, and I'll put up pictures from my new scans this weekend after I get back from a department retreat in backwoods Missouri.

Round 4

Today is the first day of my fourth round of chemo.  It's been a pretty quiet day so far with only rain storms and a very talkative man in the bed across from me interrupting the peace and somewhat quiet.  Chris, the talker and a very nice guy, has stage four esophageal cancer.  He and his wife are hoping that the chemo and radiation will work and he'll be enough to go on their big trip to Jamaica.  Today is actually his last day receiving chemo, but he doesn't seem very optimistic about life.  We talked for awhile when his wife was getting breakfast and he told me that he wasn't afraid to die and was almost a gift to know you're going to die. Now he has to wait two months to see whether the treatment worked or not.  I'm not sure what to think about Chris, but it was interesting having a candid conversation with someone who likely has terminal cancer.  It helped me put things in perspective a bit since I have completely opposite feelings about my cancer since I am banking everything on being cured by the end of treatment.  My next round of scans should be informative on how effective my treatment has been so far.

I'm getting about every scan there is before my surgery.  I have two MRI's, a CT, a bone scan, and a PET scan set up for next week.  I've had all of them but the bone scan before, and it will be interesting to see how much bone is left in my cancerous vertebrae.  I'll know the results next Thursday morning with more pictures to be put up on the blog after.  They'll be some delay since I'm leaving town immediately after the meeting to go to the dev bio dept retreat.  I'm happy that I can still do some traveling this summer even if that means just to the 'resort' in the boonies west of STL.

Balanced once again

The past week was nice and uneventful.  My body fully balanced out from the last round of chemo on Wednesday with my taste, smell, sleep, and GI tract returning to a normal state.  I've been working fairly normal hours in lab too with my experiments coming along at the regular rate of two steps forward and one step back.  I ended up leaving early for one reason or another about every day last week.  I wasn't feeling the best towards late afternoon each on of those days which was alleviated by laying around and resting.  I'm planning on working a nap earlier in the day to see if it helps so that I can work longer each day.  Hopefully my favorite couch in the library basement will be unoccupied.

I have this week off from treatment, with the following week taken up by a 5 day chemo treatment.  This will be the last one before my surgery.  I currently have an MRI set up on May 28th to see what my tumors are currently looking like so the many different doctors can plan out what they want to do.  My cryoablation to freeze-kill my pelvic tumors is on June 4th.  My surgery remains on the 10th, and radiation will follow once I recover from that.  Each step in that process and exactly what they are going to do remains very ambiguous since it all depends on how my scans look.  For instance, I met with my radiation oncologist last week to see what his plan is.  He might radiate only some places or all, for 1 heavy week or 6 lighter weeks, or not radiate anything at all.  My surgery is in the same kind of situation with Van Tine saying the room and people are all booked, but they don't know what they will be doing yet.  So that means I have nothing to do but what and see.  Fortunately, I have plenty of stuff including lab work, visiting family, program retreat, and organizing my new apartment to keep me busy.

Round 3

It has been a really long week.  I had my third round of chemo on Wednesday which was a breeze compared to the last round which took up 5 days in a row.  Unfortunately, the odd chemo rounds hit me harder than than the even rounds which snuck up on me over a few days.  I felt off most of Thursday and Friday, with the chemo side effects peaking Friday night.  No sleep, frequent bathroom visits, hot/cold, and total body soreness wasn't pleasant.  The side effects have been tapering off a bit with some sleep last night and my stomach starting to feel like normal again after eating a couple of tacos tonight.  Once again, one of the worst parts is my messed up taste/smell.  The lounge of my new apt complex smelled completely foul to me and only me for some reason, and Papa John's yesterday was a very disappointing blah.

Another reason for the incredible length of the week was moving.  My girlfriend Anna and I got the keys to our new 2 bedroom on Wednesday and moved the bulk of our stuff in on Saturday.  We couldn't have done it without the assistance and generosity of our friends who did the majority of the work moving our collective possessions.  Unfortunately, we got done early in the afternoon so not all could come back to enjoy their meager compensation of pizza.  (To those people, please remind me to put the next couple beers at the bar on me...once I'm able to drink again).  We now have about everything inside our new, spacious apartment.  It will be a week or so before it is all unpacked and put in a more permanent location.

The most enjoyable part of the weekend was catching up with a group of my college friends who came into town to visit.  It wasn't planned out that I would be moving the same weekend as the visit, but it worked out very well.  Nick, Quinn, Andy, Timmy, and I enjoyed a bountiful breakfast at The Majestic Saturday morning after they got into town the night before.   It is not everyday when I see them all completely full from a single meal with some leftover.  I then put them to work moving about everything from Anna's apt up to the new one.  Unfortunately, her box spring didn't fit in the freight elevator which then required Quinn and Andy to haul it up 8 flights of stairs.  (The effects of the move and several beers can be seen in a facebook picture put up by Nick).  We rounded out the weekend with a trip to the Arch and lunch at a random pub located next to Bogart's BBQ which is apparently closed on Sundays.  The food was better than expected so it wasn't too disappointing of a transition. Unfortunately, I couldn't join them on the AB Brewery tour due to the need to nap and run some genotyping reactions in lab.

Overall, it was a long, but good week.  My friends and family help me everyday whether they know it or not.  Emotions are running much higher than normal these days with chemo pain trading off with tumor pain.  I've found that I'm still not used to or comfortable thinking a lot about my cancer and the road ahead.  My mood is now apt to transition as quickly as a pregnant sitcom mom, and I'm pretty sure I've cried more in the most 2 months than the past 10 years.  Surgery is approaching quickly, and it makes me nervous, worried, and optimistic at the same time.  Thank you for everyone out there thinking and praying for me.

Late night doctor visit

The swollen lymph nodes that I mentioned in my previous post had not done much besides get bigger since my visit to the clinic on Monday.  I emailed Van Tine to see if he could set up another appointment for me tomorrow to have them looked at. Being a stereotypical assistant professor, he was still in his office working, so he asked if I was still on campus too.  I live about 8 blocks from school, so it is very easy for me to come in on short notice.  I wasn't surprised that the first thing he did was pinch my lumps and ask me if it hurt since Brian likes to poke and jab at any and every body part that is currently afflicting me.  Then he stuck a large gauge needle in my bigger lump, and surprisingly only blood came out.  We were both a bit worried until he poked the other one and saw a bunch of pus come out.  Brian figured he went too shallow with the big one and got pus to come out when he drove it deeper.  Morale of the story is my lumps were just boils and not more cancer (which was on the table but unlikely).  Hopefully the newest antibiotic he just put me on works to clear the rest that remains.

Van Tine also listened to my breathing to get an approximate measurement of my chest tumor.  It is extending out of my ribs and on top of my lungs, so he just has to listen to see how far up my lungs go to see how big the tumor is.  By his ear, it has shrunk considerably from its former hugeness.  He poked me in the top part of my back and proclaimed that's how big it is now.

We also talked about my upcoming surgery a bit.  They will take scans the week before to see where everything is and plan out what they'll take out from there.  The when, where, and who is all set in stone.  Now we just have to wait to find out what they're actually going to do.

Two steps forward, one step back

It has been about a week and half since my last chemo treatment, and I am feeling pretty normal.  I've been working in lab consistently since last Monday without any problems.  The side effects didn't linger much and my minor GI issues straightened themselves out within a few days of being done.  It was fairly liberating getting my port line taken out so that I don't have a tube dangling from my chest all day every day anymore.  My next treatment is a week from tomorrow and will only take one day. 

One issue that has popped up the last few days is that I have a presumptive bacterial infection causing a couple of the lymph nodes in my armpit to swell up.  I first noticed some pain a few days ago and discovered the lumps on Sunday.  I had them checked out yesterday at the Cancer Clinic where they took some blood samples to do some cultures.  They put me on another antibiotic, and the swelling should go down within a couple of days if it works.  If not, they'll probably have to cut them open to drain since the nodes have been growing pretty rapidly over the past two days.  Hopefully I will get the results of the culture back in the next day or so to see if it will affect my treatment or not.

That's all for now.  If I don't post again for awhile, you can safely assume I'm doing OK.  No news from me is good news.

Round 2 update

Today is the 5th and last day of my 2nd round of chemo. I've been at the hospital from around 8 to around 2 everyday this week, and it has gone fairly smoothly. Different friends have stopped by everyday to keep me company and eat lunch with me. I was initially worried about getting bored and having nothing to do, but I've come across the opposite. I can't say I've been able to help out my friend and labmate Ray with any of the work I asked him to throw my way. I haven't had much "free" time in between talking to friends, watching the occasional episode, and frequent naps.

The need to nap has been the biggest side effect of this round. My sleeping patterns are hit and miss with 2 or 3 naps a day, falling asleep at 8 pm, waking up at 4 am, and followed by a nap from 6 to 7 am. I had been feeling pretty good after treatment, and had been going to lab after I get done. I ended up laying down and taking a nap in lab instead yesterday, so I'm taking it easy today and going home after to clean up my place. I might even do my taxes.

Hair loss has also been steadily increasing. I've taken it down to an eighth of an inch from the half inch pictures I recently put up. Bald spots have been popping up as well which I'm still getting used to. Shaving was also a breeze this morning taking a whole minute to clean up what scruff I have left.

I'm looking forward to being done today, getting the tube which has been hooked up to my port all week taken off, and not smelling like chemo all the time. My last intermission was nice, and I'm happy to end this week by to starting a new one.