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!

Feeling OK...

The side effects have been very manageable today. I'm not feeling great, or even good, or even OK, really, but I'm not feeling particularly BAD, either. Just kind of "bleh." I'm quite tired, and food tastes/smells/looks really weird or really gross, but I'm keeping it down, with some effort! Water has tasted like chalk all day long. The anti-nausea pills work, but they make me dizzy. The dizziness has been the worst part, but it only really hits when my eyes are closed, strangely enough. Last night I had a really hard time going to sleep because of the dizziness.

Next week will be the first full week of classes I'll have gone to in about three weeks. It will be kind of good, but kind of lame at the same time. Sigh.

First day of chemo

I had the first day of chemo today, and I am on the ABVD regimen, as expected. Each of the four medications has a different set of side effects associated with it, but basically the "A" is the big hair loss one, so the hair-loss is a go. Apparently it can take anywhere from a few days to a few months for it to come out, but average is about two weeks after the first treatment. The plan right now: Dye it sometime next week (Thursday evening, Kim Dave and Erin?) and chop it off next weekend, in a series of progressively more and more interesting haircuts. If I can get the insurance company to pay for it, the wig is a go, but I expect many days I'll be too lazy to use it. Besides, head scarves come in lots of interesting colors, and I have made a promise to Greg that I'll buy a neon green one.

Right now, I am basically feeling just kind of generally punky. I've definitely felt better in my life, but I've also felt much worse, so I guess it's not too bad! I am quite dizzy and light headed, and I don't think I could even begin to focus on homework right now. I am queasy and the thought of food is really really really unappealing, but I think I could keep food down, if I absolutely had to. So, I guess that's good. I also am really tired but also jittery. I experienced this weird feeling of vertigo earlier, where when my eyes were closed and I was on my back in bed, I felt like I was kind of bobbing up and down in place, and my arms and legs and head were not connected to anything, and that my arms and legs were shrinking and my head was expanding. Weirdest feeling in the world! Tomorrow is supposed to be worse, in terms of nausea and whatnot, so I have a bunch of meds on hand, if I need them.

Also, a note for my friends who I will be seeing regularly: I am supposed to encourage each of you to WASH YOUR HANDS all the time, and use anti-bacterial hand sanitizer if I'm going to hang around you, because after treatment (especially 6-8 days after) I will be super, super, super vulnerable to sicknesses and I'd really rather not be hospitalized for something stupid like a cold. So, if I nag you to wash your hands, don't take it personally!

In other news, they haven't yet staged it, but they are almost 100% certain it isn't Stage III or IV, which means I will almost certainly not have to do radiation therapy, hurrah!

I also wanted to say thanks for all of the notes, cards, emails, etc that I've gotten from you all. I've started a collection, and it cheers me up every day. A particularly enthusiastic "thank you" goes out to ALISON, who I am assuming was the one responsible for the card from the WU EPSc department, and ANNE, who gave me something diverting and not too cerebral to read. I liked the long paragraph from Jill and the single line from Ray on the EPSc card... so typical, it made me smile. Aww, I miss the EPSc department. Thanks, guys!

Hope you are all well... to my non-Boise friends, what have you all been up to? Haven't talked to some of you in awhile.