Happy Thanksgiving!

So I know it's been a long time since I updated... about a month. For some reason I never updated after the last treatment... Oops.

I had a CT scan on Monday, which gave us some good news: All bulky masses in my neck and chest are showing "marked and significant decrease" in size. This means that the chemo is working, hurrah.

I am definitely at the point where the effects of the drugs are taking longer and longer to wear off. I get tired a lot more easily and things perpetually taste off, instead of just in the first three or four days. This could be because the last three weeks I have been fighting a minor pneumonia infection. I am at the tail end of it now, which is good.

I have decided to attempt full time, plus assistantship, for next semester. Full time for BSU grad students is 9 credits, so I registered for two real 3 credit classes (Graduate level Hydrology and Graduate Level GIS) and three 1-credit seminars (regular graduate seminar and two geophysics graduate seminars). The nice thing about the seminars is basically all I have to do is show up. The problem with having that many seminars is I can't count all of them towards my credit total for graduation, and I'm almost certainly not going to be able to make much (or any) progress on my thesis next semester. This means that I am almost definitely going to have to stay a semester longer than anticipated. As far as the assistantship goes, they think that they are going to need a TA for an online 100-level historical geology class. TAing an online course means that I wouldn't have to actually show up for any classes in person; all I'd have to do would be answer emails and do a bunch of online grading, but grading is OK since I can pick when and where I want to do it. Besides, if I didn't have to do all that grading, I'd miss out on all of the really entertaining answers that people write down (Eric would concur, I believe!) :).

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone... eat some tofurkey.

25% of the way done with chemo...!

So, now that I am one treatment into cycle 2, I am officially 25% of the way done with chemo (6 cycles, with 2 treatments each). This makes me very happy. This means I should be done with chemo by early March (if it stays on schedule), which means I'll probably start radiation in early April, and be done by early May. Hurrah!

This of course means that I have to decide what's happening next semester for me. I keep getting conflicting advice. My doctor suggests that I drop down to part time, but a lot of things I've read in message boards online from people with nearly identical diagnoses/courses of treatment suggest that I can probably stay in school full time if I select my courses carefully. The minimum number of credits to be considered full time in grad school here is 9, which is about three classes, and if I was careful, I could probably swing that. ESPECIALLY if the department let me have a lighter assistantship... like TAing one of the upper level courses where I don't have to sit around in three labs a week. That would be nice!! I would really like to not lose the assistantship since that gives me some income and covers all of my tuition costs. AND I wouldn't have to delay graduation.

In less cool news, I apparently have to get that stupid Neulasta shot every two weeks to stimulate white blood cell production. I hate that shot. It hurts and it give me back spasms for five or six days afterwards. I also really hate the stupid steroids I take for several days after the treatments, and I am resentful of the crazy expensive Emend pills I take for three days with every treatment (crazy expensive= more than $100 per pill).