In January 2015, I was diagnosed with Stage III Hodgkin's Lymphoma. This is a blog about my battle. I'm going to turn into a blog about me kicking ass and winning.
My parents have been in town for this past week and my siblings came in for the weekend. It consisted of a lot of chilling, TV and the Mavs games.
So, PET scan results! I talked to my oncologist about them last Tuesday and he said he was happy with the results so far. The tumor has shrunk and my lymph nodes aren't lighting up as much as they did in the first PET scan. Good news! I will have to do a total of 6 cycles (12 chemo treatments). There is an end in sight, people! And it looks like it's before my 30th birthday! :D
So it's been about 38 hours since I finished my 5th chemo session! Figured I wouldn't wait a week to update this time haha
We got to the cancer center 30 minutes late because I'm usually slow in the morning, especially on chemo days. I didn't want to skip breakfast because who really wants to feel worse after chemo because you're starving from missing breakfast and roid raging?! No one, that's who. (I don't really roid rage, I just am fucking hangry!!!)
Chemo went by pretty quickly. I chatted with the nurses and the front desk lady. They are so NICE and FRIENDLY that it blows my mind. I love nurses.
Oh yea, I had a PET scan on Thursday, the day before chemo. I couldn't eat 6 hours before I was to be injected with the radioactive sugar at 1PM, so I woke up at 6:30 just to eat breakfast and go back to sleep. We arrive at 1 and wait for 30 minutes. I get injected with radioactive tracer coming from a syringe encased in metal that came out of a metal box. I then get bundled up in blankets and had a space heater blowing at me so that I don't tense up and cause false positives due to bad uptake. I am basically left alone in a room by myself for about an hour with instructions to not text or talk. Naturally, I fall asleep. I get woken up by the radiologist. He compliments me on my cateye makeup not once, but twice! <3 I'm in the boring PET scan machine for what I estimate to be 20 minutes. Of course, I fall asleep asleep again. You would think the novelty of medical procedures would still keep me wide-eyed and awake, but that's now worn off. It's 4PM by the time I'm done and can finally eat.
Okay back to chemo day. I eat a huge lunch and drink like 5 glasses of iced tea to try to combat the intense dehydration I feel after chemo. It doesn't really help and now I'm just peeing every 20 minutes. I get the usual hot flashes, rosy cheeks, and dry mouth and metal taste and in my mouth for the rest of the day. I nap for a few hours but the hot flashes keep waking me up. Being drenched in sweat is not fun to wake up to! For me, it's hard to regulate - I oscillate from shivering cold to sweaty hot easily. That might be the most annoying side effect this round.
Today, I went to the cancer center to get IV fluids to help me feel better. It does help with the dehydration feeling so yay! I walked about 0.8 miles after getting home from lunch and then slept for 3 hours. I don't exactly feel sleepy, just fatigue. The naps help, but the fatigue comes back quickly.
We had a big storm pass through Austin just now that brought pea-sized hail. My poor tangerine plant thing :(
I've got an appointment with my oncologist on Tuesday 4/21 to go over the PET scan results. I am nerrrrrvousss.
Chemo #4 started off like normal - I get to the cancer center around 9AM and get my vitals taken and blood drawn. They run a CBC while I see my nurse practitioner, Michelle. I claim a comfy chemo chair and start to settle in while Terri-Lynn start my premeds. About 20 minutes later, she comes back and stops my premeds. She says my neutrophils count was very low and she had to consult with Michelle before I could continue with the premeds and chemo. I eventually got the okay from Michelle, phew. Delaying my treatment is the last thing I want. Chemo proceeds, I fall asleep, I wake up, and I listen to the other patients talk. After treatment, I was STARVING and craving Mexican. I ended up eating 2 enchiladas and all of the sides of beans and rice. I usually don't finish all my food when we go out to eat, but the premeds (steroids?) make me really hungry for a few days after chemo. While we're on the topic of food, my eating habits have taken a turn for the worse. I crave fried foods, pizza, and hamburgers alllll the time and we usually give in to those cravings. Mom, do you read my blog? Please don't get mad :x
Day 2 consisted of getting the 1st of 2 neupogen shots and a heart echo to see if chemo has affected my heart. Spoiler - it hasn't! Neupogen is very similar to the Neulasta I got after cycle 1 but shorter lasting, which is why I had to get another shot on Day 3. After arriving at the hospital for the shot, I started feeling dizzy and weak. The nurse ends up giving me IV fluids and I do feel better afterwards. I'll probably start getting fluids 2 days after chemo now to help me feel better faster. On Day 7, I had a CBC again and it showed my neutrophils were way low again. I had woken up that morning with a tickle in my throat so my oncologist had me get another Neupogen shot to boost my immune system just in case I was coming down with something. Either my immune system kicked ass and stopped me from getting sick, or it was just allergies. I'm leaning towards allergies because I am allergic to everything in Austin - mold, oak, cedar, ragweed, cedar, dogs, cats.
We had dinner with Damien's sister-in-law (my BIL's wife) and niece one night and watched the Game of Thrones premier with the Game Night Crew another night. It is always so great to catch up with friends and family. The rest of the 10 days were pretty uneventful. My days were full of working, walking, and watching Daredevil on Netflix. Everyone should watch Daredevil - it's so well done and the fight scenes are interesting. It's a little (okay, a LOT) gory and there's a lot of violence and sometimes, I turn away, but it's good. My hair is still falling out but it's not noticeable since I'm bald anyway. My eyebrows and lashes are still mostly intact so when we do go out, I rock a full face of makeup with a bald head.
I have a PET scan scheduled for tomorrow 4/16 to determine how many more cycles I have left. I have to cut out carbs and sugars 24 hours before the scan, which is fine by me! I had steak (prime ribeye YUM) and broccoli smothered in cheese for dinner and it's basically the perfect meal. Cycle 3 begins this Friday! I feel like I'm making great progress in getting rid of this cancer crap and we'll know whether this is true medically after the PET scan results. I CAN'T WAIT!
So tomorrow will be chemo #4 and the end of cycle 2. I'll either be 1/2 or 1/3 done with chemo! The total number of cycles is still up in the air. It'll either be a total of 4 cycles or 6 cycles depending on what my PET scan looks like. That'll happen in a few weeks. Boy, time flies! (Not really)
This past week has been uneventful. No news is good news, right!? This week has dragged on and I've been anticipating this next chemo with mild waves of nausea. Last Friday, I had a CBC (my WBC and neutrophils are lower than normal, no big surprise). I've never done a CBC with this nurse (Laverne) before and she offered me the option of getting blood drawn through the port. I normally get blood drawn by needle in my arm by the guy who also runs the lab so I was like why not?! No needle in my arm sounds great! I was wrong. So wrong. Getting anything in and out of a port requires a saline and heparin flush to prevent clotting. And the thing about getting those 2 through the port is that you can taste them - and they taste like a hospital smells and I've associated that smell/taste with chemo. I instantly get nauseous when she does the initial flush and again when she flushes before yanking the needle out of my chest. Most of the nausea of chemo with none of the benefits (wait, did I just say that?). Well, to be fair, I also didn't get any of the fatigue or followup nausea of chemo. But the less nauseous I can choose to be, the better. I've learned my lesson, Laverne.
I've also been wearing my fuzzy almost-bald hair out and about. I mostly don't care what people think of my hair. I did wear a knit hat to the Target and Home Depot out in way West Austin, but now I feel ignorant for doing so. I didn't want people staring but after walking around the outer part of HD in 85° degree with a stupid knit cap, I ripped it off and stopped caring. It only took that one time. Now the "cold" on the other hand, haha. I put that in quotes because it's only dropped to about 60° in the last week and I wore a small hat out because eff that breeze. I hadn't realize how much insulation hair gave to my neck and head. I've only had little kids stare, but seriously, they will stare at anything. I've had one person ask what happened to my hair. It was the sushi chef at a Korean restaurant Damien and I go to about once a quarter. I'm not sure if he recognized me or was just curious. I told him I had cancer. He apologized and hoped I got better. NBD.
Damien and I have started walking and sort of running 2 miles everyday. This started when my parents were still in town. They're not here now and I miss them tremendously. My mom texted to ask if I wanted them down in Austin this treatment and I called them back only to get the instant hangup-straight-to-voicemail. She then texts and tells me they're at the movies... kids these days. Anyways, back to the walk-running. In the 2 miles we traverse, I only run about 1/8 of it. I've never been a runner and can't seem to push myself to run for more than a few minutes. I get bored and then focus on the uncomfortable feeling of running and soon, I get overwhelmed with the feeling to stop. So I do. I'm going to try to be better about being motivated and my endurance. Damien has been by my side cheering me on (and also working on his own fitness, yay). My goal is to be able to run a whole mile nonstop by my 30th birthday. Haha, after rereading that last sentence, I now realize how sad that goal is. It don't matter. Something is better than nothing. Keep me to my word, readers.
In good news, I can no longer feel the big lump that used to be under my clavicle to the left of my sternum. The only palpable thing left is a tiny bump where my biopsy was perfomed. The lump that was further up my clavicle has gone down as well!
