Having blood in my blood feels good

As I hope you gathered from my previous silly post, I was once again hospitalized for neutropenia.  I was in bad shape last Friday--dizzy and weak with absurdly low blood pressure.  This was because I had no blood in my blood!  Dr. O said it herself, "You have no counts."  She admitted me for the weekend just to play it safe, to prevent me from catching anything infectious from Other People.  Being in the hospital definitely limits my contact with other humans and their infectious diseases, although I have a healthy fear of hospital-acquired infections.

I was a much more willing patient this time around.  The first time I was hospitalized I really did not want to be there.  I missed my system of wellness that I had at home.  This time, however, I entered the hospital with all of the tricks that I had learned the first time, plus an appreciation for not being at home.  That is, at home I incur a lot of incidental activity, such as climbing stairs and playing with the girls, that when I am super sick are perhaps better avoided in order to maximize rest and recovery.  Regarding hospital tricks, these include ordering food before you are hungry, ordering Tums before you have heartburn, and requesting bathing supplies before you actually want to shower.  I found this level of premeditation to be exhausting and frustrating the first time around, but I managed the system better this time and therefore suffered less.

Another bonus about this hospitalization is that Dr. O decided to give me a dose of blood products, specifically Red Blood Cells.  I love blood products!  To steal words from my friend M, it is truly my Go Juice.  I feel significantly better today than I did on this day three weeks ago (that is, on the equivalent day of my last hard chemo cycle, get what I mean?).  Everything is less--less dizziness, less nausea, less fatigue.  It's all thanks to someone else's Red Blood Cells, hard at work in my body.  I am grateful.  

This is a good opportunity for a public service announcement, encouraging you to consider blood donation.  I have donated blood in three different states, reaching the 1-gallon mark in one state, but I will never again be allowed to donate blood because of the whole cancer thing.  Blood donation is an easy thing for a healthy person to do, and it makes a huge difference in the lives of the unwell.  Please contact the Red Cross for blood donation information in your area.  Thank you to all of the blood donors out there, including all of my parents!

The only way to end this post is by expressing my excitement at finally being on the good side of the third and FINAL round of FEC (5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide).  Recovering from this drug combination has been the hardest thing I've ever done--harder than my first cancer fight, two natural childbirths, writing a PhD thesis, and commuting in rushhour traffic as a 15-year-old COMBINED.  I feel positively ELATED.  I don't even care that I still have three more rounds of hard chemo to go (taxotere, herceptin, and pertuzumab--the taxotere makes it "hard").  It will be so much easier.  The worst is behind me.

If the worst is behind me, then I have reached the summit.  My brother's friend J made a movie for me on this subject.  J is a mountain climber.  He and my brother climbed Mount Rainier last month, and J was inspired to make this movie for me.  It includes footage from some of his other Rainier climbs.  The photo at the end is of my brother and I when we hiked around Rainier in August of 2010 (note the change in verb from "climb" to "hike"--my feet did not touch the mountain proper).  The beauty of this 1-minute, 20-second movie jerks my tears every time, so don't say I didn't warn you.   

   

           

Winning the war

Yesterday was my last dose of FEC, as long as there are no more surprise revisions in my treatment plan.  I will have a major huzzah after I get through the FEC aftermath.

I have been fighting many battles over the last 24 hours.  FEC sucks, man.  The first battle I fought was that mysterious allergic reaction to one of the components of FEC (no one knows which one).  Dr. Oncologist's strategy was to prevent an allergic reaction by increasing my dose of steroid (dexamethasone) from 12 mgs to 20 mgs, and my dose of benadryl from 25 mgs to 50 mgs.  I should also say that I did my part by taking the anti-allergy drug Zyrtec prior to the appointment.  Despite these preventative measures, the allergic reaction started up again after receiving the F, the E, and 15 minutes of the C.  It felt like I had snorted black pepper.  The nurse stopped the dose of C, and Dr. O gave me another round of benadryl and 'roids, for a grand total of 100 mgs of benadryl and 40 mgs of steroid.  I asked her, is this legal?  She just laughed at me and said she could give me more if it came to it.  The peppery feeling completely went away after this, so we resumed the C.  Soon after resuming the treatment, the peppery feeling came back and got worse; it was the burning feeling you get when you get water up your nose.  The nurse stopped the C again and waited with me for a bit.  The good news is that the allergic reaction never got worse.  My throat never got sore, my skin never flushed, and, most importantly, my lungs never tightened.  After a few minutes Dr. O came back into the room, assessed where I was, and asked me what I wanted to do.  I said I wanted to finish the C!  As long as my lungs remain clear, bring it on!  I therefore received the full, final dose of C, with little more than a peppery feeling in my nose.  Boom.  Huzzah!

I was more of an innocent bystander in the second battle of my day and night.  This battle was between benadryl and dexamethasone (the steroid), fighting for control of me, aka Side-Effect Hill.  Benadryl quickly gained control of my eyelids, but dexamethasone had a stronghold on my heart.  The dex hunkered down, commandeering my heart to pound out the drumbeats of war, all night long.  Benadryl made numerous offensive strikes, claiming an hour or two of sleep at a time, but overall the strikes were unsuccessful against the entrenched dex.  I finally dragged myself out of bed at 9:30 am, only to go downstairs and take another dose of each drug (as ordered by Dr. O).  I only have to take the benadryl while I feel the peppery nose (yep, still peppery) to prevent the reaction from worsening, and I only have to take dexamethasone one more time tomorrow.  The Battle of Side-Effect Hill will likely continue for at least another night or two.  Damn side effects.  Damn peppery nose.  Good thing I have a comfy couch for epic resting.      

The battles are tough, but I am winning the war.  The FEC has done it's job:  the breast cancer seems to be completely gone.  The tiny lump that Dr. O and I can feel could simply be scar tissue from the biopsy, that's how small it is.  My previous drugs (TCH+P) reduced the cancer substantially, but the FEC has obliterated it.  The most noteworthy fact, in my opinion, is that I had one lymph node adjacent to the cancer that felt swollen throughout all of TCH+P treatments.  In contrast, I can no longer feel this lymph node after three rounds of FEC.  In summary, let it be known that I am grateful for the FEC and remain humbled by its cancer-fighting powers.  But good lord am I glad that the havoc it wreaks is almost over.

Finally, I have an appointment for a PET scan on Tuesday, July 8th.  This is three days before resuming three more rounds of the TH+P-C treatment.  I normally hate PET scans because I frequently have false positives (I know they are false positives because I've had to go through the explorative procedures to prove it).  This one, however, excites me because we will see that nothing is glowing in my lungs.  I never felt like I had lung cancer, and I definitely don't feel like I have it now.  Dr. O did not say anything about the results of this scan changing the course of my treatment.  I am not even allowing myself a glimmer of hope about that.  But I agree that it's a good time to assess what's going on in those lungs.  I am quite curious.  Quite.  Again I say, bring it on!  Huzzah!

I'll end with a public service announcement.  I wrote this post while listening to Ray LaMontagne's new album ("Supernova") on Spotify.  Wow, it's excellent.    

Over

Where have I been?  Where am I now?  Who am I?  These are all valid questions, and the most frequent answer to all of them is, "sleeping".

Camping Memorial Day weekend was wonderful.  We camped two nights, and I didn't want to leave.  It rained on us a couple of times, but we could retreat to my dad's camper if the tent got too wet.  The temperature remained cool, the wind remained calm, and the sun came out just enough to dry us off but not roast us.  It would have been great to stay there all summer, shirking chemotherapeutic responsibilities.

I had an impossibly short week between camping and chemotherapy.  At work I had to revise and resubmit a manuscript whose deadline was May 10th, and at home I had to spend quality time with my daughters.  I had spent many extra days being sick the last chemo cycle, between the harshness of the new drugs (FEC:  5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide) and the 4-night hospitalization, and so I missed doing ordinary things with the girls.  In two days I flipped the manuscript, proofed another one, took the girls shopping for sandals, played with them at a favorite park, and baked them from-scratch blueberry muffins.  Needless to say I gave myself a fever on Thursday of that week and slept until chemotherapy on Friday.

Chemotherapy on Friday.  I am so tired of chemotherapy Fridays.  On the plus side, my friend S joined me and we had a lovely time.  We pre-partied with chocolate croissants on the patio before heading to the chemo game.  Also on the plus side, I received a reduced dose of the F in FEC.  This is because I reported on the status of my guts--tenuous at best, and not a situation that I would call "recovered".  Dr. Substitute Oncologist (Dr. Oncologist was away at a conference) said that this was likely caused by the F, and that reducing the dose could relieve the bodily toxicity without decreasing its cancer-fighting ability.  I said, huzzah and thank you, Dr. Substitute Oncologist!

Then I realized one of the many reasons that I love Dr. Oncologist.  Dr. Substitute Oncologist was about to send me to the waiting room, to wait to be called back to an infusion room.  Dr. O's nurse intercepted me and took me back herself.  If Dr. O had been there, she would have walked me to an infusion room herself, saying, "Now I'm going to put you to work."  I used to think that was cute or endearing, but now I understand that her statement has more depth than that.  I work harder for her than I've ever worked for anyone my entire life.  I sit in that chair and take her drugs, then I go home and drink when I don't want to drink, eat when I don't want to drink, and sleep when I'd like to be doing anything at all.  I shower when I don't have the strength to stand.  I walk so that my body doesn't forget that I need it.  Dr. O, thank you for recognizing the work that your patients do.  We in turn appreciate the work you do that makes our survival possible.

On the down side of last Friday's chemotherapy session, I had another allergic reaction to...something.  Halfway through the last bag of drugs (it was the C, cyclophosphamide) I started to feel a peppery sensation in my nose.  Then my lungs started to feel tight and I started coughing.  Just like with the carboplatin reaction, the nurse stopped the dose and gave me a nebulizer treatment to open up my lungs.  A different Dr. Substitute Oncologist checked me out and declared I'd be okay for the rest of the treatment, but he slowed down the drip.  He also said that they usually don't see reactions to this drug, so perhaps I was having a delayed reaction to the F or the E?  Who knows.  What I do know is that my lungs tightened up several times throughout the weekend before calming down on Sunday, so it was certainly a reaction to chemotherapy.  Hopefully Dr. Oncologist can figure it out before my next dose.

With this last treatment, I am over the halfway point (again...and again) of my chemotherapy regimen!  Huzzah!  Okay, truth be told, that "huzzah" was completely forced, because I don't feel very "huzzah" about it.  I still have so many hard ones in front of me!  I just have to keep my head down and barrel through them.  Through them, or perhaps over them?  I am struggling with the best preposition for what I have to do.  I feel like I sometimes squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath until it's over, but I also feel that sometimes I float near the surface and take regular sips of air as the current takes me where it's going.  Over, through, whatever--it needs to be over, and I need to be through it.  I am so sick of being sick.

Good thing there's a party next weekend to distract me.  Hopefully I'll see you there.  I'll be conveying my love and gratitude with eye hugs.  Dozens and dozens of eye hugs.