b nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn <--- those
aren't my thoughts, they're my cat walking on the keyboard (but i think
Bubba is saying good morning !)
advise
for the day - - don't attempt to read your own xrays - - at 8:45 am
yesterday my oncologist got out his little tape measure and compared my
xrays side by side .. its HIS opinion that my tumor is now 6.0 cm
instead of 6.2 cm AND it appears to be less dense in the upper right
corner - - almost like you can see through it .. he's encouraged because
this is the first time that any treatment resulted in a change in the
tumor
so we continued
with my 4th round of chemotherapy and 2nd round of avastin .. in the
meantime, on Oct 25th, i'm scheduled for another brain scan (to rule out
that "question mark" on my brain) i have an appointment to see how the
rest of my body is doing with another PET scan .. it would be great news
if my lymph nodes have returned to a normal size, perhaps the chemo has
eliminated the cancer from my lymph nodes, so perhaps they won't have
to be removed surgically .. then i go back for another chest xray and
appointment with the oncologist on November 4th .. he figures by then
he'll have a better idea if i should continue with radiation or perhaps
on to surgery to remove the remaining tumor and of course the
surrounding lung tissue
about 90% through the chemo i started
feeling extremely nauseous .. a first for me ... this is one side effect
that normally doesn't hit me until the 4th day after chemo .. my sister
Susie drove me home .. we got out of chemo at 2:30 pm .. by 3:00 pm
i was sound asleep .. i woke up around 8 pm, popped a sleeping pill,
then i went back to sleep until 2:30 this morning
i
have my pain pills handy just in case the Avastin starts causing me any
discomfort .. i've got my Zofran handy in case the nausea kicks in
again .. and i've got sister Susie for 2 more days .. oddly enough, i
can never seem to take a nap unless either my sister, Susie or my
daughter, Kissy are here at the house with me .. i guess i'm lacking in
the hostess department lol
i
did a little research on radiation therapy yesterday .. besides a lot
of medical mumbo-jumbo,the treatment does have its own set of
side-effects, but nothing compared to chemo .. i think i could handle
the rads !
of course
the extent of any surgery would depend on how much of the tumor remains
.. the surgeon would need to remove the tumor and enough lung to leave a
clean 1/2 in margin around the tumor .. thats a pretty big chunk of
lung .. so of course i'd need to submit to pulmonary testing first to
make sure i'll be able to breath if i'm missing a big chunk of my right
lung
i feel like i've been to hell and back in the last 4 months
.. the docs and i are playing this little game "lets see how close we
can get Pam to deaths door, without actually killing her, but killing
the cancer" .. they've pretty much convinced me that they've gotten me
closer to death than i've ever been before .. but my tumor has remained
unaffected .. THAT has been the frustrating part .. all i wanted to see
was some small sign that all this pain and agony and suffering (not only
mine, but the agony that my friends, family and loved ones have shared
with me this entire journey) has been for a reason .. just a small sign
.. and i got that sign yesterday .. the tumor IS responding !!! so ok
.. sign me up .. bring me to deaths door yet again .. i feel like i have
a chance now .. i have no idea how big of a chance .. but its a CHANCE
to beat this damned cancer !!
and yes, i'm crying again :)
i
was chatting yesterday morning at 2 am with my son .. i was just waking
up, he said he still had about an hour of studying to do before he
could get to bed .. then he asked me "whats the deal with the dolphins
as your icon?"
i told
him that one of the things on my "to do list" was that when i was
recovering from my surgery in hawaii that i wanted to "swim with the
dolphins" .. he laughed and said he had a couple of friends that could
hook us up .. "us?" i questioned, surprised he'd want to go swimming
with dolphins with me :) "mom, i'd swim with sharks for you"
on
the family note .. i have another grandniece !! My niece Lisa gave
birth yesterday at 8 am to Kylie !! Congrats Lisa and Willie and
Grandma Linda !!
thanks
everyone, for your prayers, your well wishes and good thoughts .. i am
feeling so much more encouraged than i have been this entire roller
coaster ride :) thank you for being there for me .. for being my
friends
so much for a good nights sleep .. even with the sleeping pill, i'm wide awake at 2 am
i just had to share this with y'all
i
swear i just got done with jury duty less than 2 years ago .. of
course, its really not convenient for me to serve on a jury right now ..
i've got chemo brain and i'd have to have them keep repeating
themselves .. plus all these digestive problems that go hand-in-hand
with chemo .. well .. lets just say i'd be calling a lot of recesses lol
there
IS a box to check that would excuse me from jury duty but i need a note
from my doctor .. that just doesn't sit right with me .. i'm almost 50
years old and i should be old enough to write notes for myself .. but
no, now i need to bug the doc .. so i wrote the note, all he has to do
is sign it
"please
excuse Pam from jury duty next month because of her cancer treatment" ..
its so close to the notes i used to write to excuse my daughter from
school .. i guess life does have a way of coming full circle eh lol
i
don't know how i feel about the possibility of not having chemo today
.. its not that i like chemo .. in fact when people ask me now if i'm
allergic to anything i always respond that i'm allergic to chemotherapy
.. but at least i knew what the plan was for today .. i like having
plans, they bring me comfort .. having the treatment all up in the air,
still being a guinea pig trying out new drugs .. eh .. not my cup of tea
i
was shocked to see no visible change in the size of my tumor .. as sick
as i got this time i thought for sure we'd have that thing running for
the hills .. but i also know that using Avastin for stage IIIa lung
cancer is really new .. all the studies and trials were done on stage
IV .. the studies i read (or had the brain cells to actually comprehend)
stated that the drug added an average of 2 months to patients with a
prognosis of 10 months of life left .. but they didn't go into detail
about how many treatments of avastin they had to have before the tumor
responded
and just in case you picked up reading my journal
mid-stream, what we're trying to do isreduce the size of the tumor in my
right lung to allow for surgery .. as my cancer is staged now, the
tumor size, located in my right lung (6.2 x 4.4 x 3.8 cm), the lymph
node involvement (the lymph nodes on the right side and between my lungs
are cancerous), the cancer type (the non aggressive type of non-small
cell), and the fact that we haven't found any new cancer = cancer speak
means i'm NSCLC T3N2M0 and that gives me about a 5% chance of living for
5 years .. IF i can get the tumor removed surgically, my odds increase
to 25%
oh,
and i'm STILL a non-smoker !! i actually went 2 weeks without using my
nicotine patches, (OK, i confess i was just too sick to get out of bed
to get them) but as i'm moving closer and closer to chemo, i've used the
patch again for 2 days .. but i'm not gonna get down on myself, cause
i'm still not smoking .. here is my newest update from quitnet . com ..
Your Quit Date is:Friday, June 24, 2005 at 6:30:00 PM
Time Smoke-Free:111 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes and 28 seconds
Cigarettes NOT smoked:2230
Lifetime Saved:17 days
Money Saved:$392.00
i'll take those precious 17 days thank you :)
have you ever done something that
somebody warned you NOT to do, but you decided you knew better than they
did and did it anyway?
i'm
feeling kinda like the time i was a child and decided i couldn't wait
until Christmas day and snuck down and unwrapped a present under the
tree .. and afterwards i felt awful and realized that the surprise of
unwrapping a gift on Christmas day was a lot more fun than finding out
what i was getting before Christmas
i
just got back from having the xray and blood work done .. and realized
nobody told the xray technician that i wasn't supposed to see the xray
i
told her that i really wanted to see it cause my tumor was feeling like
it had been around long enough that it had qualified as "one of the
family" and wanted a name
she laughed .. "once it has a name, its going to expect a present at Christmas"
"and of course, its going to expect to be invited to Thanksgiving dinner" i added
"and i suppose you'll have to take it trick or treating"
"not only that" i joked, but "its going to want a costume for Halloween and i have NO idea what kind of costume to get a tumor"
"maybe it could be a cotton ball" she suggested
"nope .. that wouldn't work .. its more of a rectangle shape, so probably more along the lines of a Volkswagen van"
"ohhh !! we'll paint it florescent green with peace signs all over it!!"
but
i shouldn't have looked at the xray .. i'm NOT a specialist .. i can
only guess .. and from where i was standing, my tumor doesn't look any
different than it did back in June
i've got a call into my sister
Susie to double check to make sure the doc said no chemo or
avastin tomorrow if the tumor hadn't responded .. i just need to make
sure i didn't make that up and that he really DID say that to me
of course, i could be wrong .. maybe i don't remember what my tumor looked like
i
just got a call back from sister Susie and she recalls that the doc was
rather ambivalent about plan C .. remember, there is basically NO
research done on treating patients with stage IIIa non-small cell lung
cancer with Avastin .. so he may decided to hit it again or give up on
the chemo/avastin treatment and go straight to radiation treatment
so
now i'm off to call my wife-in-law (my ex-husbands wife) since she was
in radiation oncology for 3 years and get a little more info from her as
to what to expect if i end up needing radiation
now i have the added stress of naming the tumor .. "tommy tumor" sounds so pedestrian .. any good suggestions?
the DMV (California Department of Motor Vehicles) has got it in for me
seriously
i
remember several years ago when i attempted to take care of a situation
over the phone .. the person answering the phone insisted that i had to
come down to the DMV in person .. i told her that was ridiculous and
asked to speak to her supervisor. she refused .. she also refused to
give me her name .. and then she hung up on me .. 6 TIMES !!!
so i
wrote a letter to the local DMV, outlining exactly how i was treated ..
a few days later i received a phone call from the supervisor expressing
his apologies and telling me that my letter was going to be used for
training purposes .. "how to be nice" i think was the name of the class
but i think they keep a permanent file on people who create problems .. and they've got a file on me
several
months ago i decided to put my ego aside and apply for a handicapped
placard .. the little thing that hangs from the rear view mirror and
lets me park in those valuable close parking spots .. i call it my lazy
persons placard .. during chemo, i simply don't have the energy to walk
that far to the store .. and if i have to park too far away, thanks to
the "chemo brain" i forget where i parked my car
i was very
humbled and embarrassed and even thought my doc might give me a hard
time about signing the application .. he didn't though :)
so i mailed the application and a check for $6 off to the DMV in mid-August
it
was returned to me in mid-September .. actually, a copy was returned to
me with a letter saying they needed the original and they had received
the $6
frustrated, i waited until my next appointment with my oncologist on September 23rd, and had him sign the copy in blue ink
3 days letter i get another letter from the DMV returning my original application but now telling me they needed the $6 fee
i
decided that as soon as i was strong enough, that i'd have to do this
in person, face-to-face .. i wanted a real live idiot to explain to me
how something so simple could get so messed up
so i called for an "appointment" .. i got the earliest time slot a week later
and
i sat there for 30 minutes waiting for my number to be called .. i
swear if anyone ever comes to my office that works for the DMV, i'm
going to hand them a number, them i'm going to makethem sit there while i
occasionally walk out calling numbers that aren't theirs ..
"appointment" my tush
but i finally got my placard .. i stuck it in my purse
and
of course tuesday, when i finally venture out in my car, i remembered
that i had taken the placard out of my purse out so i wouldn't forget it
and it was sitting on my dresser ::rolling my eyes again::
oh,
i finally called the oncologist office yesterday .. i have my chest
xray and bloodwork today since my chemo is scheduled so early tomorrow
morning (8:45 am) i wanted to find out if there was anyway i could check
out the xray to see if the tumor was smaller .. that way i wouldn't
have to stress all night long waiting for the results (if the tumor
hasn't responded to either the chemo or the avastin, i won't be having
chemo tomorrow)
the nurse said the xray technicians couldn't show
me the xray and the doctor isn't in the office today anyway so i HAVE
to wait until tomorrow for the results ..
it
feels like i'm taking a pregnancy test, leaving it on the counter and
refusing to check on it until the next day .. sure .. right .. its cake
.. NOT
but down at the bottom of the order for the xray, they
have little boxes that the nurses check .. "routine channels" "telephone
report" "patient back w/film"
first the nurse mistakenly checked
"telephone report" .. i pointed out her error, so she crossed out the
check mark and checked "routine channels" .. i suppose i could cross out
her mistake and check "patient back w/film"
except
there is ONE small flaw in my plan .. i can't lie .. i can't even
pretend i know how .. the tech would hand me the xray and i'd crumble ..
fall to my knees, reduced to tears, begging for forgiveness ::rolling
my eyes:: somedays i wish i could just lie like normal people seem to be
able to do
now
i have a question .. does anybody know what this is? does anybody know
why i bought it not even knowing what it is? haha i KNOW why i bought
it .. cause it looks like christmas lights .. but really, does anybody
have a clue as to what it is? and don't be a wise cracker and tell me
"its a plant" .. i know that much lol
wow .. i'm still reeling from the news (check out the front page image of The Post in the lower right corner)
but
now i have a quandary .. how do i begin a journal entry once my name
has appeared on the FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post? eh !!! i lead
such a difficult life hehe
chemo angel update: y'all know i signed up for chemo angels right? i wrote about it initially here in this entry .. day 82
yesterday
i received a card from my chemo angel Sandy in Illinois .. she wrote of
harvesting sunflower seeds and of making a huge crock of vegetable beef
soup and pumpkin dump cake. i have NO idea what pumpkin dump cake is,
but it sounds yummy !! Sandy wrote that she knew if she lived closer
that she'd love to bring me over some "comfort food" .. that in itself
is almost enough to make me move to Illinois lol
almost :) but
in the meantime, she got me thinking i really would enjoy cooking again
.. something i just haven't had the energy to do since i started chemo
back in august
but that changed yesterday !! i have tried to
leave at least 2 days prior to each chemo to focus on "enjoying" my
life (as opposed to being miserably sick and weak from the chemo) .. so
yesterday i cooked up a huge batch of chicken noodle soup (i make a mean
chicken noodle soup if i do say so myself!) and today i'm cooking up a
huge batch of beef stroganoff (with shredded beef, not sliced beef) .. i
got the recipe from TV, Food 911 with Tyler Florence who did a show on
Russian food .. i'll let y'all know if the recipe is worth trying out ..
i know its smelling pretty good lol
with the Food Saver that my
sister Susie got for me (thanks again Suz!!), i'm going to freeze
individual portions of the chicken soup and beef stroganoff to keep in
my freezer to enjoy when i'm back to being too weak to cook .. thanks
Sandy, for getting me motivated :)
my
other chemo Angel, Erika, from Virginia, has been sending me the cutest
gifts .. yesterday i received an adorable set of kitchen towels, oven
mitts and pot holders with kitties on them (we both adore felines)
a
few months ago Erika sent me a certificate from Barnes & Noble ..
i've been holding on to it, waiting until i needed to buy more books
(thanks to my sister, Nancy, i'm still up to my neck in catching up on
Robert Tanenbaum's novels of the Butch Karp series .. she sent me 5
books and i've only finished one) but yesterday i received an email from
Barnes & Noble about "toys and games" .. i took a quick look at
what they carry and ended up ordering a vintage edition of Monopoly ..
in a wooden box no less !!
last week my kitties got gifts of cat treats from Erika's cat lol
thank you Erika :)
yvonne508
mentioned in a comment that i have neglected to mention my son lately
.. he's still (he'd better be still) studying his tushy off in college
over on the islands .. he calls me, rain or shine, at least twice a week
.. i was a bit embarrassed to be bragging about my interview with The
Post but he seemed to think it was pretty cool too .. he'll be home for
Christmas and i'm hoping (really really hoping) that once my tumor has
shrunk enough to enable me to undergo surgery to remove the tumor and
part of my lung, that i get to recover in hawaii with my son
my
big boss told me the other day to "let him know" if i needed anything ..
so i asked him for a round trip ticket to Hawaii when its time .. i
used to be shy about taking people up on their offers of help .. i think
i'm slowly getting over that lol
oh,
and my sister Nancy found out that Barnes & Noble carries at least
one copy of The Post if anyone is interested in getting a copy of
today's issue .. i'm flattered that its important enough to her to be
running around town buying up copies .. i mean, i know i feel oddly
tickled about being on the front page of The Post, but that she shares
my giddiness is really neat :)
(hehe thanks Kathy!!!)
can you believe it? 2 entries in one week lol
even
though i realize i'm taking a slight risk sharing this here in my
journal (not only with all my journaling friends but the world) i am
just so tickled that i couldn't even consider NOT sharing this with
y'all !!
besides, keeping secrets isn't something i'm good at, nor is it something i enjoy
so when
i was contacted by AOL a few weeks ago, asking me if i "minded" if they
passed my name along to The Washington Post, to be interviewed for a
possible article .. and then when the reporter .. a REAL reporter from
the Washington Post called me and interviewed me .. it was killing me
that i had to keep it a secret
first of all, even i know that being "interviewed" is not the same as being IN The Post
second
of all, it was no doubt, going to be a tiny piece, hidden in the depths
of the Post .. thankfully the reporter showed me to the
washingtonpost.com so i could keep an eye out on the story
and then
the reporter, Yuki Noguchi, asked if i minded keeping the story
hush-hush until after it was published (can't have other newspapers
getting wind of her story before its published!)
and
then yesterday i finally received an email from Ms. Noguchi letting me
know that her article is appearing on the front page !!!
ask
me if i ever dreamed 2 years ago when i started my journal that it
would end up coming to the attention of AOL (thanks Joe!) who would
recommend my journal to The Washington Post
now y'all can say you knew me before i got famous eh !!!
check it out if you want, The Post IS available online but you have to register
here is a link to the "Print Edition" of today's edition of The Washington Post
Print Edition
Blogs Offer Some A Cyber-Catharsis
By Yuki Noguchi, Page A01
Logging intensely personal experiences on the Web has become a new form of therapy for millions.
Coping Online
Page A01
"i go back thursday for another xray
to see if the tumor is responding to the drugs and chemo, ... i'm in
tears just thinking about it"
YES
! that last one is a quote from MY journal entry yesterday, appearing
on the front page of The Post .. this is just too weird lol
i had
a lot of good things to say about the people who read and comment in my
journal .. for me, you all are the best part of my journal
i'm sitting here at my computer
playing Mahjong Garden (pogo.com) and realized that if i didn't get off
my lazy behind soon and write something of a journal entry, that in a
few days i'm probably going to be too ill to write so i best get a move
on !!
i'm slowly
gaining my weight back that i lost this round of chemo .. i got down to
111 pounds and this morning i'm weighing in at 119 .. i have just a few
more days to pack the weight on and i'm doing everything i can do to
help it along :) i swear i must be eating 5 - 6 meals a day .. small
meals, but still .. within an hour of eating i feel like i haven't
eatten in days .. its weird to say the least .. but i DO have my
appetite back and the chemical taste is gone so i can enjoy what i'm
eating which helps hehe
i
got to spend a few hours with my daughter last night .. her daddy
brought her by after school yesterday .. i'd pretty much had a full day
by the time she arrived so i asked her dad if he minded just sticking
around and making it a relatively short visit .. it was a nice day so we
ended up sitting on the porch and enjoying the sun
i feel like i
spent the entire time watching how my daughter interacts with her
father .. their relationship is so different than it used to be ..
watching them joke around, even having their own "private jokes" .. i
think its done him good for him to be around her and her sense of humor
.. oh hell .. who am i trying to kid? i'm jealous .. plain and simple
.. there, i admitted it
i
go back thursday for another xray to see if the tumor is reponding to
the drugs and chemo .. hell, i'm in tears just thinking about it .. i
guess a lot is riding on the hope that THIS time the tumor is going to
be smaller .. and yet knowing there IS a chance that the new drug,
avastin, just isn't working either .. i want the tumor to shrink but it
seems to have a mind of its own .. i suppose i could stick around after
the xray to check it out .. see for myself it the tumor LOOKS smaller ..
i just don't know if i have the nerve to look at the xray though .. i'm
scared .. really really scared
my chemo is scheduled for this
friday .. this will be the 4th round .. oh, and just to make myself
clear, i'm not having fun anymore lol
i
basically caught up on all my office deadlines for the next few weeks
.. its required that i work 10 - 12 hours a day, but at least i won't
have to worry about the office after the chemo .. i have our CPA
dropping some documents off at my house this morning, i make one more
quick trip to the office, and i have wednesday and thursday to "enjoy"
i
also need to stock up on groceries for the next few weeks .. if this
round of chemo goes anything like the last, i'll have no appetite for at
least 10 days, so i'm eatting all the fresh food i can get my hands on
now, because afterwards, it will be impossible to keep anything fresh in
the house
i lead such an exciting life eh?
i
realized yesterday how easy it is for me to become focused on the small
picture .. the "how much pain am i feeling", "how sick do i feel" ..
sometimes i forget that all these struggles that i'm facing and dealing
with (all because of the chemotherapy and drugs) are for the bigger
picture .. the long run .. things get screwed up in my head when i
forget to look at the big picture
i'm
going to have to end this entry now, something that i'm taking is
making my hands go numb frequently, and its really hard to type when i
have no feeling in my fingers lol
on
a brighter note .. i wanted y'all to see how much my accidental garden
has grown .. i figure in a few weeks i'll be calling it my accidental
jungle !!
AUGUST 7TH
SEPTEMBER 19TH
OCTOBER 11TH
(and
just in case anyone is wondering, the sign that i have nailed to the
tree says in spanish, "this is my garden, do not pull any plants"
.. just in case my gardeners are ever again tempted to help me by
pulling out my plants)
(A BELATED RECAP OF DAY 92 - SHEESH, WHERE HAVE I BEEN FOR 12 DAYS ?1?!)
finally and about time eh !!!
this
is what i wrote saturday morning (after my 3rd round of chemo on
Friday) and also what i wrote on sunday before i ended up in bed for a
week, exhausted from the chemo
i'm
wondering if in my stacks and stacks of documents on the chemicals i'm
receiving plus the documents on the side effects from the prescriptions
i'm taking if insomnia is in there somewhere
here i am, wide awake at 2 am and i even took a sleeping pill at 8:30 last night .. obviously to no avail !
i'm
thinking i'm awake because the chemo side effects have already begun
and with them the realization that this is just the beginning of 12 days
of seeing how sick i get to be
this morning i've got the hiccups (again) , the nausea and an upset tummy
maybe
its just a bad case of nerves .. i received my first infusion of
Avastin yesterday. the documents they hand out with the drug, which is
NOT chemotherapy, attacks the blood vessels that feed the tumor.
tumors
send out signals to nearby blood vessels, causing new blood vessels to
sprout toward the tumor. This process is called angiogenesis.
Avastin
blocks angiogenesis, preventing the growth of new blood vessels,
starving the tumor and making it harder for the tumor to grow. On
average people taking Avastin in combination with the chemo have their
tumors become smaller in size.
the
side effects? Weakness (in my case immediately), pain, diarrhea,
nosebleeds, leukopenia (reduced white blood cell counts) and oh yea ..
serious tumor related hemorrhage (bleeding at the site of the tumor)
which is a terminal side effects
i
called the doc .. apologizing for not asking this all important
question during my appointment .. but if i'm gonna hemorrhage and die,
how soon into the treatment would this happen? an hour? a few days?
weeks? how soon before i can cross that off my list .. he wasn't sure
but he promised he'd check with the manufacturer on monday (yea yea, it
probably feels silly to everyone except me .. if i'm gonna die from this
medication, i really do have a few calls i'd like to make first, so a
little heads up would be appreciated)
so
friday morning, as usual, my sister Susie and i head over to the lab
for my blood work .. the lab has an ongoing collage of sorts where
patients and employees bring in stickers and magazine cutouts to add to
the ambiance of the framed artwork .. of course we added cat related
stickers lol
we got to skip the xray this time since we already know my previous 2 chemo treatments didn't effect the size of my tumor at all
my
bloodwork came back that i'm now experiencing anemia so i get to add
one injection to my therapy today .. ick .. i hate injections but i hate
anemia even more :)
my treatment began at 9:30 am friday
1
large bag of fluids with .50 mh benedryl to prevent allergic reactions;
.25 mg aloxy to prevent nausea; and .20 mg decadrom to prevent nausea
1 large bag of fluids combined with Cicplatin (#1 chemo drug)
1 small bag of Taxotere (#2 chemo drug)
1
injection of 250 mg something that encourages my bone marrow to produce
more red blood cells and eliminate my anemia (i think this stuff takes a
couple of weeks to work though)
1 more small bag of fluids with a diarrhetic to make sure my kidneys are working (yes yes yes they work .. sheesh)
then 1 small bag of Avastin 800
with chemo scheduled to complete at 4 pm
at
my previous appointment with my oncologist, when he hit me with the
news that my tumor hadn't shrunk, in essence, the chemo failed .. the
rest of the day is a blur .. at least this time i remembered to find out
what Plan B consists of and of course, you'll never catch me without a
backup plan .. so together, the doc mapped out Plan C for me
PLAN
B - seeing a marked reduction in the size of my tumor from the
combination chemo/avastin .. i'm scheduled for another xray on the 13th
of October and my 4th round of chemo on the 14th of October
if
there IS a reduction of the tumor shown on the xray, we will continue
with the chemo/avastin until my tumor is considered small enough to be
removed surgically
PLAN Cif
there is NO reduction in the tumor, no more chemo, but set up for
radiation treatments to see if those will reduce the tumor so i can be a
surgical candidate
during
chemo, one of the nurses walked around handing out hand knitted (or
crocheted) hats for chemo patients .. i got a burgundy one and got
permission to snag a purple one for Lisa, a friend of my moms who is
also undergoing chemo in Las Vegas
and then we got sports bottles
(free) and then the nurses passed out ribbon pins for our particular
cancer type .. my sis and i got the white ribbons for lung cancer. I
also begged and received 4 free samples of Zofran (that big buck
anti-nausea medication)
oh, and i got a free pillow to ease the discomfort from the arthritis in my neck
i
think we were just a couple of hours into the treatment when my chemo
nurse, Roxy, suggested my sister and i go down to the shop downstairs
that caters to female chemo patients .. so my sister, Susie made our
grande escape (with Susie taking pictures the entire time lol)
and i ended up walking out after buying a wig lol
after
returning (dutifully to chemotherapy) i ended up playing musical
hats the rest of the day, first bald .. then i wore my new burgundy knit
hat .. then i started sneezing so i donned a face mask that eventually
ended up on top of my head, Yakima style, then i'd wear my new wig for a
while .. then back to bald ..
well,
i've now written myself into 2:30 saturday morning .. i've popped a
couple of pills to ease the side effects so hopefully i'll be able to
get back to sleep and get this journal entry typed into my computer
hopefully soon
