Chemo is in the house
Chemotherapy has officially begun. So far it just feels like a fairly bad case of the flu. I really can’t complain, considering it is chemotherapy, and it’s only for 5 days at a time. I didn’t sleep very well Monday night, which was the first night I started, so I wasn’t feeling well much of the day yesterday. Thankfully, my niece was able to take the kids for the day so that I could get some rest. From the experiences that I have read online from other people, most of them say that the first 2 days are the worst, and then your body adapts….I guess.
After a week of processing the fact that this tumor is growing, I’m very at peace with our decision of how to move forward. We are going to attack this thing from several different angles. One of the things that becomes a challenge in treating cancer is that at some point, a lot of cancers will become chemo-resistant. Even though cancer cells are a more fragile cell than normal cells, they are very smart. They figure out ways to “hide” from therapies that are trying to attack them. This is often why a patient will experience stability or shrinkage of their tumor, but then all of a sudden the cancer starts growing, again, even while on chemotherapy. There is an inspirational story that you can read here, about a man that had the most aggressive brain tumor one can have (Glioblastoma), with a life expectancy of 6 months to 1 year. This was in 1995, and the man is still alive today. He ended up incorporating his own cocktail to treat his cancer. He, much like I, was very involved in the decision making process of what his treatment regimen would entail. The difference between what he did and what I’ll be doing, is that he incorporated a lot of different drugs that were being used to treat GBMs. Since I don’t have a Glioblastoma, but a lower grade tumor, I wouldn’t qualify for most of those things, and I have chosen to try some “softer” therapies. These therapies have been shown to compliment Temodar, as well as offset the immuno-suppressant side-effects of the drug. Boosting your immune system is very important for a cancer patient. It’s ultimately your immune system that will win the battle against your cancer for you. Because cancer treatments are extremely immuno-suppressive, I will do whatever I can to boost my immune system back up, through mostly natural therapies.
Finally….an update
I’ve been suffering from a case of blog neglect. It seems that there are so many other things that have been drawing my attention elsewhere. Here’s a quick recap of the latest:
a. My PET scan is still radiologically presenting my tumor as low grade (yay!!). UCLA says that my MRI is overall stable, but want another one done in mid to late January, rather than wait the usual 3 months. I’ve been having a minor visiual disturbance, so we want to keep an eye on that.
b. As many of you heard, my dad contracted a very serious staph infection in his bloodstream in November. It was serious enough that I felt like I needed to go down there for a few days, until he started coming out of it. It was a very scary time for our family, but God was gracious enough to pull him through it. He’s doing really well now, at home and doing IV anti-biotics for the next 4 weeks. They will still be doing a test to look at the back of his heart in January, to make sure the infection didn’t do any damage back there. The doctors say that he’s a very lucky man that he’s alive, and that he wasn’t paralyzed as a result of the absess that was creating all of the pain and pressure on his spine. THANK YOU for all of your prayers.
c. Seizures continue to plague me, for some reason. I’ve had one each month, now, for the past 5 months. I normally only have 1 to 2 each year. My neurosurgeon believes that my medication is just not working for my body, anymore, so I will see my neurologist on the 23rd, and hopefully she will do some adjusting. These are so frustrating for all of us. I had one a couple of nights ago, about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave for Tyler’s Christmas play at school. Nice. Thankfully he’s old enough to understand what happened, and was okay with it. When he came home, he immediately came over to the couch where I was laying and said “mommy, I’m so sorry that you had to miss my concert. I know you wanted to be there. I’m okay with that” As long as he’s been old enough to be aware, I have dealth with these seizures, so it’s kind of a blessing that it’s not too traumatic on him. Definitely a bummer, though…..physically and emotionally.
That’s it in a quick summary. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!