Doing Fine Midway Through Round 10

This is a quick mid-round update. The round has gone well, albeit my scores are slightly lower than average. I did have a head cold on days 2-4 (Sun-Tue). It didn't help that I spent the entire first weekend after chemo (Days 0-2) at a swim meet. Breathing hot, chlorinated air for 8 hours straight isn't fun for a healthy person. And it's much less fun for a breathing-challenged lunkhead like myself. I took my first two sick days off from work in as long as I can remember. I was able to sleep for 12 hours each day and that really helped kick the cold. Luckily I made it through unscathed.

And I've finally found the official term for the tingling in my toes and fingers - Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy. Unfortunately knowing this has't lessened the effect of the tinging sensation that is now more pronounced in my toes and is not so bad in my fingers. It is harder to button a dress shirt in the morning and I seem to be stubbing my toes more often – Murphy's Law.  On the good news front I have shed the water I was holding during round 9 so I no longer feel like a beached whale going through menopause.

One highlight this week is I'm having dinner with Bondy on Wednesday. It will be great to see him. Mom and Dad are taking me to Chemo treatment #11 on Friday. Only one more to go after that. Hallelujah!

I'll leave you with the rainbow that greeted me as I was getting over my cold last Tuesday. A good sign.

Good Luck Double Rainbow

Much Love!

Chemo Treatment #10 - Smooth as Silk

Everything went better than I expected today at my Round 10 chemo session. It started with dad's positive attitude that it was going to be a great day and I would have only two treatment s left after this one was over. And that's just what I needed because leading up to today I felt like I was coming down with a cold. Add to that the aforementioned water retention and veins that are becoming harder to find, and I thought I might possibly have to skip this treatment. On the upside, I had the latest pulmonary function test on Thursday and my DLCO/VA score was 90.1% of predicted value, this is up from 89.3% one month ago and that is good news. After discussing all this with Dr. Seifter there were no questions that we would proceed with this treatment...more good news. I was also happy to see my vitals were all good with my blood pressure being 110/70.

Dawn was running the chemo room today all by herself. I was the first patient and it was quiet for for the better part of the first hour. Dawn found an excellent vein (cephalic?) on the top side of my right hand, next to the thumb muscles. The three vials for my CBC were filled in no time and steroids, anti-nausea, and standard saline IV fluid were all flowing in short order. The CBC results (below) were back quickly and the WBC was still acceptable although it's the lowest we've seen yet (1300/uL). The granulocytes numbers were acceptable as well and my RBC, which continues to be almost normal. Given all that, we were a go for chemo.

CBC Round 10

The chemo treatment lasted just over 3 hours, one of the quickest yet. Dawn was awesome, working with no assistance and handling 5 additional patients while dad and I had an ongoing conversation. I was back home by 1pm and ready for a nap, quite the opposite of what's supposed to happen when one is full of steroids.

We're almost there! Two more to go.
Much love to you all.

PS
A picture from our oysterfest an birthday party at mom and dad's last week.

49th Birthday Pic

Round 9: Brack-9, HL-0... 75% There!

Happy Valentine's Day. It's been another good round that included my birthday, a superb Super Bowl win, lots of great Cajun food and some fine sweets. It started with the birthday oysterfest at mom and dad's on Sunday. Yes we ate more than 150 oysters prepared a half dozen different ways. Big Money and Chris made an appearance as did my friend Rob who has been hanging with me since third gade. It was a fine day for sure.  Fat Tuesday featured homemade oyster and sausage creole from David. Dinner tonight was homemade oyster and sausage gumbo from dad. Jason brought over a Panera cookie and pastry sampler last weekend from his family. Danny brought by some good brew from his family. And Mark and Janice sent a cookie and candy sampler that never stood a chance. That's one sure fire way to keep the weight on!

My scores for the round have been good although a few things kept my them in the reasonable range. My tastebuds never quite made it back during the second week. I've been retaining more water than the Hoover Dam and my sinuses are a bit out of whack. Other than that all is good.

Round 9 Scores

The funniest thing this round had to be mom's temporary teeth while she was waiting for a couple implant crowns. She looked just like the picture below…no kidding.

Almost Mom with Temporary Teeth

Much love to you all.

*** 

PS...I'll also leave you with a couple jokes I heard this week, #1 for the first time. Both were good for a laugh. Warning...the #2 features adult (juvenile?) humor.

#1: 

Three men each married a woman from a different country. The first man married a woman from Italy. He told her that she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from Poland. He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Ireland. He ordered her to keep the house clean, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has some difficulty when he pees!

#2: 

A vacationing penguin is driving his through Arizona when he notices that the oil pressure light is on. He gets out to look and sees oil dripping out of the motor. He drives to the nearest town and stops at the first gas station.

After dropping the car off, the penguin goes for a walk around town. He sees an ice-cream shop and, being a penguin in Arizona, decides that something cold would really hit the spot. He gets a big dish of ice cream and sits down to eat. Having no hands he makes a real mess trying to eat with his flippers. After finishing his ice cream, he goes back to the gas station and asks the mechanic if he's found the problem. The mechanic looks up and says "It looks like you blew a seal."

"No no," the penguin replies, "it's just ice cream."

Round 9 - Looking good, Billy Ray! Feeling good, Louis!

And that blog title pretty much sums it up!

Round 9 has gone just fine so far. I did have a short period of eating less than I should simply because I didn't feel like eating something I couldn't taste. Fortunately that only lasted a few days (days 2-5). During that time I re-rediscovered a fondness for mac and cheese. It seems to cut through the blandness caused by affected taste buds and it tasted great with lemonade. I was back to normal just in time for my birthday on the 7th. It was perfect timing because oyster stew was on the menu and it tasted superb. 49 and doing fine!

One thing I've thought about during this round is luck. Luck can run in a lot of directions. In some cases you smile thinking that someone was looking out for you. In other cases you realize that it's what you make of it. Those who know me have heard me say I've live d a charmed life. I truly believe that I am a lucky man year after year.  Some recent examples (and I could go on for pages)…We dodged Hurricane Sandy back in late-October while it devastated many, like Colleen, who is still working each day to get back to normal.  Winter storm "Nemo" (as they are now calling it) is wreaking havoc right now over the same region as Sandy and all we got was a little rain. So my "good luck" snow thrower (two years old now) remains unboxed in the garage. Meanwhile our son Chris, who is in Providence, RI, has 18" of snow and counting – he's shoveled at least three times already but he still has power. And I'm still managing to do much better than just getting by. I firmly believe I'll be cancer free by April.

Below is a picture JJ sent me. It first reminded me of Danita's voicemail from a weeks back (Jan. 26 blog entry). In addition to what I mentioned in the earlier blog post she said that we would celebrate being cancer free together by getting superhero costumes a telling people "chemo is shmemo" and cancer can be beat. She is so right and JJ's email to me below further illustrates that: 

A Masterpiece

This is a picture from ~15 years ago, done by one of the oncology kids here at CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philly).  I have had this picture on my desk all 15 years (long before I even started working at CHOP).  This pic was in a calendar given-out by CHOP as a thank-you for supporting them.  I noticed this one picture and scanned it separately.  I first made a desk picture out of it and then a large poster, which greets everyone as they enter my office.  Anyway, I always thought if this young kid (11 years old) can have this attitude going through what he is going through - I can make it through my daily trials.  I contacted the kid (now a young man) about 2 years ago and thanked him for the picture and told him what it meant to me. By the way, he is now ~25, studied graphics arts at college, doing well, and living in Jersey.  Anyway, I hope you like it - I know you'll like this kid's attitude (Captain Chemo meets Cancer Man and KICKS HIS ASS!) Keep kickin' ass! --JJ

My thanks to JJ for the picture and email and to Tommy (now Tom?) for the additional inspiration from a cancer survivor.

Much love to you all. 

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...

A not-so-subtle reference for you Beatles fans like mom and dad, Griff (aka Big Money), and Colin (aka cross-country capable and contemplative brother of Meaghan). Chemo treatment #9 is complete with no issues whatsoever. I am now 75% done with chemo, three-quarters complete, LXXV, the proverbial Jonathan Ogden jersey…and it feels good. This is what it looks like:

Doing Alright

The morning started slow, as in the travel time to Dr. Seifter's office. A snow dusting overnight had the usual effect of transforming a select few Maryland drivers into complete morons thus slowing the rest of us to a crawl. A 35-minute trip turned into a 90-minute trip through west Baltimore (think The Wire). We were only a half hour late thankfully.

I remembered to ask Dr. Seifter my questions that I had been forgetting to ask. Primarily I was interested in what happens after #12? It's pretty straightforward. I will get another PET/CT a month or two afterwards to verify that I am still clear. Then I will continue to go in for check-ups every 3 months for the first year, every 4 months for the second year, and then every 6 months  for the third year of being cancer free. This will be accompanied by one or more PET/CTs  throughout. Typically the doctor will also order an additional blood test for erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). This is sometimes elevated in Hodgkin's Lymphoma patients however I have not followed a typical path through HL when it comes to blood markers or any other symptom. We'll se how that test goes. 

It was then off to chemo. Anna and Dawn were working today and it got pretty busy. It was the first time I've seen every chair full. There were three new faces and couple familiar faces. A blood test is always first and my CBC continues to look good. WBC was at 1600 (up 100 from two weeks ago), GRAN was up as was RBC which is almost back in the normal range. After that everything went as smooth as possible.

The only unusual event today was when one of the new patients, a thin but fit-looking man in his late 60s, got an awful case of the shakes. His shakes were much more violent and painful looking than I remember all too well from chemo #6. Fortunately Dr. Seifter was able to work with Anna and Dawn and the patient was almost back to normal in 30 minutes after some additional meds.

We were finished by 1:30 and headed home. A solid nap in mid-afternoon, some snacks, and homemade, fresh blueberry pancakes with maple syrup for dinner all sealed the deal for another good start to a round of chemo. 

Much Love and Go Ravens!