Treatment Road

My trip down treatment road started on Friday the 19th of June. That was the day when I went in to receive my first round of chemotherapy.

This road, created by my doctors, is 22 weeks long. The 22 weeks are broken in two by a two week break between all treatments. These two weeks count as two of the 22 weeks of treatment so I'm really only facing 20 weeks of chemotherapy, ten weeks before the break and ten weeks after. During the first ten weeks I must go to the hospital once every three weeks, starting on the first day of the first week, to receive three chemotherapy drugs at the same time. I must do this four times in all during the first ten weeks. During the second ten weeks I must do the same basic thing four times except that I will only be taking two drugs instead of three. The third drug is what cause the worst side-effects so I will be referring to it as "nasty C" because it's name starts with a C and I don't know nor care how to spell or pronounce it.

Besides my trips to the hospital for drugs, during these two periods of ten weeks I am also receiving a dose of Vincristine once a week at home as well. During the second ten weeks I will also be receiving radiation therapy due to the fact that my cancer ended up spreading to some of my lymph nodes. This will be every day for the first four and a half weeks of the second ten weeks. After the second ten weeks are over I will have completed my journey down my road of treatments.

The first week of that road was not easy. I went into chemotherapy on Friday in a state of complacency. Although I knew that this was supposed to make me nauseous and all I was still complacent because I had also heard a whole lot of good stuff about the great anti-nausea drugs they gave you at the hospital. I was rudely awakened from my complacency by strong, painful nausea. The drugs did not work as good as I thought they would and needless to say I vomited three times during my eighteen hour stay at the hospital. The reason I had to stay for eighteen hours was that the "nasty C" had to be thoroughly washed out of me by hours worth of fluids given to me via a port that had been installed in me the week before. This is necessary because "nasty C" is bad for your kidneys so they want to make sure it goes through you as fast as possible.

But "nasty C" obviously does its share of damage while it's in you because for days after I left the hospital I was still feeling the effects of "nasty C". For days I experienced waves of nausea and my apatite was very low. Drugs they gave me for home provided some alleviation but even when I wasn't nauseous I still had this general feeling of fatigue most of the time. Of course, there was that one drug in which got rid of my nausea, gave me back a little apatite and made me feel very happy. But I didn't take this one often because I always thought I was finally getting better and I could ween off the drugs. I also refrained from taking it a lot because a nurse warned that it was addicting. I could tell, for it really seemed to give me unnatural happiness. At this moment however I'm not so sure. I'm starting to wonder if I've stumbled upon a drug, or a class of drug, that could actually make me the happy, outgoing person I was meant to be. I'll explain what I mean by that another time perhaps. Now I would just like to finish by saying that I'm pretty sure that the effects of "nasty C" are finally fading away and I should be fine until my next dose of "nasty C" two weeks from now. As for the Vincristine I'll be taking once a week until then, I'm not too worried about it. The side-effects of Vincristine aren't that bad so I don't think that the next two weeks will be too bad. Only time will tell for sure.

Generous People

On Wednesday, my father received lots of generosity from people at his workplace. Earlier he had only one person at his work about me, his boss Carol. But on Wednesday Carol was not the only person there that knew. She told everyone there what was going on with me and everyone responded well.

They created a nice little get-well card with a whole bunch of signatures on it for my family. They also donate a bunch of money to us as well. My father said that they all treated him nicely and were very sympathetic. He said there was even one person who told him about someone they knew with cancer and got very emotional in the process.

But the people at my dad's work are not the only ones outside my family being nice. My mom's friends have been generous as well. They have all been concerned about me and have been asking about me all the time. A couple of her friends even assembled a nice little gift basket for me!

I'm sure this generosity will continue and I will always appreciate it, as will the rest of my family. People being nice to you always helps you get through hard times. Hopefully the worst is already over for me and the chemotherapy will not be that bad. I guess I'll see on Friday.

Regardless of how I do later, thank you everyone who has been generous to me and my family, especially the people at my father's workplace. My father says that the people he is working with now are some of the friendliest he has worked with and the generosity they showed Wednesday is great proof of that.

Saturday Scare

Saturday, just two days after my surgery and one day after I left the hospital, was supposed to be a fairly relaxing day for me. My first full day at home since Tuesday, I was supposed to just lie around and rest that day, doing nothing but maybe watching some movies or TV. At first that was all I did that day. Eating and drinking were fine and urinating was also fine.

But at night, while I was just sitting on the couch watching a movie with my parents the unexpected happened. At first it just felt like I was a little cold, nothing I could not handle. But it seemed to progress. I put a light blanket on my torso but that did not help much. I began shivering uncontrollably, completely unable to stop. First my dad, then my mom, tried to hold me in order to stop the shivering. I was terrified. I was totally unable to stop my muscles from tensing up. It almost felt like I was going to die.

Finally, while in my mother's arms, I stopped shivering. I was so relieved! It was just so frightening to be shivering uncontrollably like that. Unfortunately, the shivering was followed by a fever. My father called a doctor and they said that I might have to go to the hospital again. I did not want that. Fortunately, the doctor ended up saying that I should take some pills and go to sleep and if the fever persisted until morning I would go to the hospital. I slept good and hard that night and when I woke up the fever was very low and by midday it was totally gone. I hope that this never happens again because it was terrifying. Hopefully the chemotherapy will not produce side effects like this. Right now I'm just glad I am better and I hope it stays that way until Friday because I desperately need some time to relax!

Home from hospital today

Had my macroscopic lymph node remove yesterday, since I was unconscious the whole time I don't remember much but when I woke up in recovery I felt very nausea's and my mid section hurt. Started pre procedures about 9:30 with some very nice drug that made life very nice. Next pump into the IV and I was out till I awoke in recovery with my mom and dad there about 4 hours later. Moraphine is very very good. Laid around for a few hours and got some more pain meds, had some sprite and tried to urinate, you know how they are in the hospitals are about that. I just couldnt go, was drinking alot and had IV going but not flow. Dr. came by later and increased IV had me walk to washroom and finally got some to squirt, "oh happy day". That was thursday went home friday afternoon and just laid around. Nurse wo let me out recommended tylenol 325mgs every few hours. My dad called the hospital and said moraphine last night and today asprin??? They gave me a script for some hydrochdone. Finally some relief. Get to see onocologist on Friday and learn of my chemo schedule, cant wait. My father loves me.