Many Exciting Events!

It's been a long time since I've updated this thing, since I kind of keep forgetting that it exists. Oops. A number of interesting things have happened since my last update. I will describe them here.

I finished chemo over two weeks ago, and got to ring the "I'm done with chemo" bell. It was all very exciting, and I am very glad to never have to return.

A week after finishing chemo, Dave and I got to go to Salt Lake City to visit Ed. We did many exciting things, like go to a dinosaur museum, but the pertinent point from the trip is: Emily kicked butt in miniature golf.

On Friday, I had the "set-up" appointment for radiation. Basically this meant that they had to set it up so that I get radiation in exactly the same place each time I go in. To do this, they dipped a sheet of plastic (with little holes in it) into a tub of hot water. The plastic heated up enough to become stretchy, malleable and slightly sticky. They had me lay on a table, with this weird thing under my neck, and had me tilt my chin back as far as I could. Then they laid the malleable plastic over my face, shoulders and upper chest and squished the plastic around until it was a firmly fitted mask. The little holes in the plastic allowed me to breathe, but not much more than that. The plastic was tight enough that even blinking was difficult. After the plastic had firmed up, they bolted it down to the table I was on. This is NOT an experience for the claustrophobic. After bolting the plastic mask over my face and shoulders, they velcroed my feet together, so this way they can be sure that I am ALWAYS in the same position when I go through the machine. Lovely. I was also told the worst of the side effects that I can expect will be: a lot of skin irritation, a really really really horrible sore throat, and constant, low-level fatigue. I start March 30th and will be going in every weekday for four to four and a half weeks.

On Saturday the 21st I started feeling kind of flu-y, so I called the after hours nurse number. The nurse was alarmed that I had stomach pain and head pain so she told me to go in to the ER. I got there, with Mom, sometime shortly after 3 and was there all afternoon. While I was there my temperature kept going up and up until the doctor decided he was going to make me stay there overnight. The headache was also concerning to him as he thought it maybe meant meningitis, and he briefly considered doing a spinal tap. I am extremely grateful that he decided that it wasn't a necessary procedure. The conclusion in the end was that i probably had a combination of the flu and a delayed reaction to the Neulasta shot I got two weeks before. The hospital room I was in through the night was very nice, but it's difficult to get enough sleep when they wake you up every two hours to take your vitals and some blood samples.

Finally, in a set of completely unrelated news, I officially get to go to Alaska for field work in August!! We will be going here (where the red arrow is pointing):
So, we'll be well into the Arctic Circle, which is very exciting to me! The project involves using airborne ground-penetrating radar (250 MHz at ~15 m in the air) to detect changes in the active layer of the permafrost and to image anomalies associated with thermokarst formation and changes in sedimentation along the Toolik River. To those of you who are not geologists, this means we are using a radar to watch ice melt and ground collapse. It will be very exciting, and my advisor expects that we will get two papers out of it: a field methods paper for AGU, since airborne GPR for permafrost is quite uncommon, and then the final paper discussing the results.

That is all I have to say... I am on spring break now, and am staying home, which is somewhat less exciting than it has been in the past four years (during which I went to the Mojave desert (awesome), Death Valley National Park (awesomer), Mammoth Caverns NP (Hillbilly Hounds!), Cumberland Gap (rainrainrain and hermaphrocalves), Great Smoky Mountains NP (pretty scenery), Congaree NP (mud and pigsign), Charleston (very nice), Houston (excellent Mexican food) and Port Aransas (Gulf of Mexico and a beach resort!).

A Very Long Overdue Post!

Hello all! It's been a super long time since I updated this thing, and people have been nudging me to get to it, so here I am!

For the most part, things have been continuing the same. The past few treatments have been a lot rougher in terms of the fatigue and the nausea, but not so rough that I can't manage it. It's mostly just that I'm really tired for up to a week, and I feel queasy on and off for the three or so days following treatment. I have been noticing a bit of a change in my breathing, which is to be expected from some of the drugs. As a result of that, two weeks ago the doctors/nurses made a decision to reduce the amount of Bleomycin I'm getting by 25%, to prevent any further lung complications.

BUT, I did have some (tentatively!) good news on Friday. Dr. Hodson told me that before my next scheduled treatment (on 2/20) I am going to have the PET scan, CT scan and Pulmonary Function Test repeated; if (IF!) the tests show good progress then I will be allowed to skip my final two treatments entirely, which means that I'll be done with chemo four weeks earlier than anticipated, and that also means that the treatment I just had might have been my last. I won't know for sure for a couple of weeks, because the tests are starting on February 16, but as soon as I find something out, I'll let people know. I'm crossing my fingers!

I will, of course, still have to go through the radiation :(. I am not sure if I will still get the four weeks off between chemo and radiation if I end up skipping the final cycle of chemo, but I'm hopeful. Luckily, I have a fairly light course load. I'm taking the minimum number of credits to allow me to be considered a "full time student." of those 9 credits, 3 of them are seminar/discussion type courses and 6 credits are for actual courses. I am also lucky enough to have gotten one of the easier assistantships... I'm TAing an online course, so I can do a lot of the work from home, especially now that I have a shiny new computer!! Of course, the most important thing about the full time status and the assistantship is that it allows me to keep my tuition waiver, stipend, and health insurance.

I'm a little unsure of what I'll be doing this summer, because it sounds like a lot of people have widely varying responses to the radiation. Some people have very little fatigue, and some people have fatigue that persists weeks or months after they're done with the radiation treatment. Bcause of the potential long-lasting fatigue, I kind of do not want to commit to field work for this summer (hiking around in Alaska and doing field work while completely laid low by the radiation does not sound like fun!), so I'm going to try to come up with another plan. I will probably either stay in Boise for the summer and work on the parts of my thesis that don't require new data (background research, etc) or I will apply for an internship somewhere. Believe it or not, for those of you who have listened to me complain endlessly about ESRI and ArcGIS, I am thinking of applying for one of the ESRI student internships in either northern California, Olympia WA, or St Louis.

I hope everyone had a good holiday season; I know I certainly did! I got to see friends from high school who returned home, and I also got to see most of my college friends (Ed came up to Boise, and then I went to Chicago and St Louis to see Emma, Anne, Laura and Brian). Last weekend I went up to Sun Valley with some friends, which was fun as well. Also, in a few weeks I'm planning on driving down to Salt Lake City with Dave to visit Ed while he's home from grad school for spring break.

Leave a comment and let me know how you're doing, if I haven't talked to you in awhile!

Things I Hate...

Well, I am potentially halfway done with chemotherapy as of today. I am getting a CT scan on December 23rd, and depending on those results Dr Hodson will decide to do a total of 6 or 8 cycles. If she goes with the 6 cycles, then today was the halfway point, yay (6 treatments in, 6 to go!).

At this point in the treatment, I feel entitled to do some complaining, so I have compiled a list of things I hate. For a cheerier update, I'm going to post a note on Facebook, so if you don't feel like reading my whining, check there.

Things I Hate:
1. Dexamethasone. I hate the way it makes me feel weak and dizzy and I hate the after taste in my mouth and how it makes me gain weight and I hate how it contributes to my...
2. ...inability to sleep. Can't fall asleep, and can't stay asleep. Which doesn't help the...
3. ...fatigue. Emma (aka emaclrkschnfdt) can attest to the fact that I am no stranger to sleep deprivation.... (as Laura put it once, "give up, it's hopeless!"), but this is fatigue on a level that sleep can't really significantly help. Bone deep fatigue that can hit any time, anywhere. Speaking of bones....
4. ...Neulasta shots and the associated bone pain. I know that the Neulasta helps me keep a normal level of white blood cells (I was dangerously neutropenic after the first treatment), but damn, it makes my back hurt for four or five days. And it gives me back spasms.
5. I hate that I can smell the chemo on me for days and days afterwards. It makes me feel sick.
6. Saline flushes. It's just salt water that they use to flush out the port before and after each drug is administered, but it tastes GROSS (after it's injected, I can taste it in my mouth immediatly). Strangely, it doesn't taste salty, it tastes chemically and metallic. Until this week, I just thought it was kind of gross, but today I had a really bad reaction and nearly threw up. How pathetic would it be if the only drug in this whole process that make me puke was the freaking salt water???
7. My port. I have a love/hate relationship with the thing. Three of the chemo drugs I"m on are so toxic that they can't be administered through anything but a port, and the port makes it so the nurses don't have to search for a vein, but today they couldn't get the port accessed right because it had turned itself on its side in my chest. It took them six needles to get it accessed.
8. In this vein (har har), I also hate having the nurses search for veins in my arms. It took them four tries yesterday. Apparently I have hard-to-find veins.
9. I hate ABVD. I hate how it makes my heart race (weirdest feeling ever), and I hate how I can smell it everywhere, and I hate the fevers and the dizziness and the disorientation and the lack of ability to focus and the sleeplessness and the way it affects my taste buds and my appetite and my hair...
10. ...which is not falling out as quickly as I would like. It fell out very very very very quickly while it was still shoulder-length, but as soon as I buzzed it down it's coming out slowly. I'd like for it to be just GONE, already.
11. Finally, I am sick of the line, "If you're going to have a cancer, Hodgkins is the one to have!" i know that most people with cancer have worse experiences than me, and I know that I have a cancer with a roughly 84% cure rate, but that's still not a line I want to hear. "If you're going to get crushed by a car, you might as well get crushed by a BMW." "If you're going to get hit in the head by a large falling object, meteorites are the way to go because they're awesome!" Doesn't work that way, people.


OK, I'm done complaining. I just felt entitled, as I've tried to keep the complaining to a minimum before today.

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).

First cycle of chemo done!

So, the two treatments in the first round of chemo are officially done! Only five more cycles (ten treatments) left to go, then a month off, then a month of radiation five days a week, then presumably done, done, done.

This time around was a little rougher than the first time around, but I guess that's to be expected. My white blood cell count was super low, so I had to get a shot to boost white blood cell production. I also have to be super careful about the foods I eat and stuff like that. Erin and Kim came and kept me company at chemo this time around, which was much appreciated!

Also, the hair-cutting and dying and wig buying is now officially chronicled on facebook (have you vorn vigs? ahhahaha that's never gonna get old, Emma [E.]!). Too many Emmas. Henceforth, Emma W is Emma and Emma E is Thingy. I am very grateful for the influx of notecards and well-wishes and trinkets that are coming in from people everywhere. Thanks guys! I was especially happy to get a note card from my fellow Pathfinders 08 and a super cool photo frame from Emma.

Alright, time for me to head to bed. The Ativan is kicking in!

Update!

So last Thursday I had a sort of follow-up appointment with my primary oncologist, just to go over how the first week after chemo went, and what we can do differently this week. I got some OK news and some not so OK news. The OK news is that I am officially Stage II-A-X. The "II" means all cancer is either above or below the diaphragm (above in my case) and it hasn't spread to any other systems, which is a good thing. The "A" means that I have no secondary symptoms, which is also good. The "X", however, means that mine is classified as "bulky," meaning that at least one of the masses is at least 10 cm long. In my case, there are three that are "bulky": the one in my neck that made me go to the doctor in the first place, one in the upper mediastinum and one in the mid-mediastinum. Studies on how the "bulky" designation affect overall survival rates vary; some suggest that it doesn't impact the five year survival rate (which is between 85 and 95% for stage 2 non bulky, a very very good survival rate!), and some suggest it lowers it by 5-10%. Most importantly, it means I will probably have to get another month or two of chemo, and will almost certainly have to get radiation therapy which makes me unhappy :(

In other news, I have a new haircut! It's short, and kind of alarming to me sometimes, but I am told it looks decent. I'm going in on Thursday for Round #1, Treatment #2 of chemo, so we'll see if that affects my hair status at all!