1st Chemo Treatment

This past Wednesday I had my first chemo treatment. I am actually scheduled to get chemo every other Monday. But since my Doctor wanted to have me admitted to the hospital for observation, I did not get in till Wednesday. Overall the treatment went well. After they put a line in my arm, the nurses administered a drip to hydrate me, then they administered some liquids to ensure that I would not get nauseous. Then the fun began and they administered four different bags of chemotherapy drugs. On the fourth bag, halfway through being done, I experienced a reaction that I believe was more panic than allergic. A weird feeling came across me and I began to uncontrollably shake and my blood pressure went up dramatically. The nurses and doctors stopped the chemo, gave me some cortisone steroids and valium to chill me out. It was a weird experience, and poor Amy who just arrived at the hospital when this episode was taking place was told she could not go into my room because there was an emergency. When I calmed down I completed my chemo without any other adverse reactions. Since I've been home Thursday all has been well. Imspent time with Olivia and Amy, had some dinner with two friends of mine Karim and David, and I've had a bit of a rest. The only downside is that for the first 5 days I need to be extra cautious around Olivia and Amy in case there are chemical toxins being released through my skin. So I have to watch the bodily fluid exposure to both of them. When I am around Olivia I am wearing gloves to be extra careful. When I put them on for the first time, she was a bit taken back. Now she is alright with them and I only have a day or two left with the gloves.

Treatment Timeframe Correction

In my post yesterday I mentioned that I should be ending my chemo treatment at the end of February. Unfortunately, today I was informed that there will be another 6 cycles added on to the treatment.(6 cycles = 12 weeks) That will take me to the end of April for the chemo, then the month of May will be radiotherapy. Well it is longer than I expected, but what is another 12 weeks in comparison to a much longer life to enjoy Amy, Olivia and so many other wonderful people and experiences. I do have to say that it is odd going into the hospital for my first treatment, but I'm feeling pretty good physically and emotionally at the moment. I have lots of energy, I'm eating well, and I'm keeping up with Olivia who motors round the house like an F1 race car. Knowing tomorrow they are going to inject me with medication that can revere this feeling is a bit odd, but tests don't lie. Gotta do it. One last note. Amy, Olivia and I went to a photographer today to have our family photos done before the hair goes bye bye. It was a great time. Olivia is a character. Definitely gets her personality from Amy.

Treatment Details (Medical)

The chemotherapy treatment that I will be going through is known as ABVD which consists of four types of drugs that they put together and administer intravenously. At this point the Oncologist, Zimet, has said that I will go through 6 cycles of treatment which takes place every fortnight. The first treatment will be administered this Tuesday in which I will have to be admitted to the hospital so that I can be observed overnight in case there are any odd side effects. Also during my treatments the doctors will be monitoring my blood counts to ensure that i am not at risk of other illnesses. At the 3 month marker or after the third administration of the treatment, a full evaluation will take place to see if the treatment is working.

After the chemotherapy is over, approximately at the end of January, then I will begin 4 weeks of radiotherapy. The radiotherapy will take place 5 to 7 times a week for 4 weeks. Intense.

Zimet has told me of some of the side effects that could occur with the chemotherapy treatment. Some of those are: nausea and vomiting, but can be controlled with drugs, hair loss which grows back after treatment, reversible falls in blood counts, minor risk of cardiac damage, minor risk of long term shortness of breath and mouth ulcerations.

In my next blog I will talk about some of the things that I am doing from a nutrition and meditation perspective to assist my body in dealing with the treatment.

Staging Results and Final Diagnosis

First, I want to say to everyone who have posted comments, thanks. It's great to receive such positive thoughts from wonderful folks like you. The past two weeks have been busy to say the least. Lots of needles, scans, consultations, etc. My apologies for being a bit on the silent side. I felt that one post to cover the results would be best. So here we go. The final diagnosis is that I have stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. This is a good result. Reason is that the Lymphoma has not spread to other parts of my body. It's primarily in the neck and the chest region. If it was only in one lymph node region, then I would of been stage 1. But since it is in multiple areas of the chest and neck, I'm stage two. During a visit to the radiologist this week she did mention that the size of the tumor that I have in my chest was impressive and its up against my air pipe and close to the chest cavity. Good thing we're early.

Here are the results of the tests. If you read any of the previous blogs I mentioned a few of these tests that I was going through. The one I was worried about the most was the bone marrow and that one came back negative. So the factory is all good. I also had a abdominal/pelvis CT scan that came back negative. This test checked out all of my organs and lymph nodes below the chest past the groin area. Then the final scan was the PET scan which is the most thorough body scan where they inject some radioactive sugar into your body and put you through a scanner in order to trace where the sugar goes. Your heart and brain eat a lot of sugar and so do tumors. This test came back negative as well. Numerous blood tests came back negative. These tests were primarily looking at white and red blood cell counts along with organ functions. I believe they were also looking for other cancer indicators as well. And finally, since the chemotherapy can cause shortness of breath and possible long term cardiac damage they ran tests to established a baseline of where I am at right now. Those tests came back favorable where i demonstrated good lung capacity and a high percentage of blood being able to be pumped through the heart.

Bone marrow biopsy - Well that sucked

I'm still not sure why I had to be awake for this procedure because it sucked. Let me set the scene. First the objective of this exercise is to inject a needle inside an incision made right above my tush/fanny/butt and suck out a teaspoon of liquid marrow and then extract a 2 to 3 cm piece of bone. Then at the same time I had to lay on a bed on my side with my knees to my chest. Challenging for me, awkward for the doctor, but achievable. Drugs included a pill to help with the nausea and morphine to make me relax. Then a local anesthetic applied to the area where the procedure took place. I'm not sure what was worst, the pushing/pressure of the needle on my bone or the weird feeling of marrow leaving my body because of the odd void left behind. The piece of bone they yanked out was the easy part. Glad it is over. A day later, I'm a bit sore, but active. Looking forward to the results. As a side note, the reason why this procedure had to be done is that the marrow is the site of normal production of blood cells (white, red, platelets). This is the only place where they can see if the blood cells may be lacking or abnormal in the development, produced in excess, or replaced by cells normally foreign to the marrow, ie cancer. In other words it is at the core and will help with understanding the progress of treatment.