Saturday, September 26, 2015

Round 3 Chemo 2 Me1

If you think the title of this post has a point, you're right. I went to Chemo by myself today; my wife had to stay home. She is recovering from what could be a contagious throat infection. Therefor ME1.

Today's treatment was the second in this round. So, Chemo 2, and including my first round of oral chemo this is Round 3. So there it is, the meaning of the title.

The chemo went OK today, I'm tired, but otherwise good. I also saw my oncologist today as well. He tells me the blood work is OK for now and I should expect a couple of months of treatments every other week, for as least the next couple of months. After that a scan to see if the chemo is killing or at least stopping the cancer from spreading anymore.

So.... Vicki is getting better and for now I'm doing all right. We'll see how the weekend goes. Oh and yea I've got the on body injector deal on me that will give me a shot of Neulasta tomorrow around 3:15 in the afternoon. Then the whole treatment will be done.

Hope you have a great weekend.

RT


 

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Three is a Charm?

After finding two small masses in my lungs and then a biopsy to determine if it was cancer, which it was, I had a PET scan to see if the cancer was anywhere else. If it had just been two little masses they would have radiated them, but they found two more so that meant I must do chemo first to stop the cancer spreading anywhere eles.

So this will be my third round of chemo if you include the oral chemo I took with radiation for 28 days straight at the start of this process last year. Then I got a break for a few weeks before surgery and then I went on chemo again. That second round was infusion chemo using a port surgically implanted in my chest. This latest round will be the same, though the drugs used are different.

In addition to some very expensive toxic chemo drugs to kill the cancer floating around in my bloodstream (The billing lady at the clinic told us each dose of one of the drugs was $5000), I am also being treated with a biologic which requires a shot of neulasta 27 hours later to help keep  my white blood count up. This is accomplished through an on body delivery system that gives me the shot while I am at home. The unit injects a needle into the skin on your stomach, then removes the needle and replaces it with a thin plastic tube. This tube delivers the dose over the course of 45 minutes 27 hours after treatment.

In order for the chemo nurses to know the unit is working properly the needle injection takes place at the clinic, then you wear the unit for the next 27 hours till it delivers the drug. It seems that in this I am an early adopter. The unit has been in use about 4 months. It worked fine yesterday and I have no complaints since it beats going back in to get a shot.

Speaking of being an early adopter, we purchased a new 4K UHD big screen TV recently and had to go back to Best Buy today to choose another brand and have ours picked up for return. The TV we initially purchased was the Sharp Aquos 65 inch Smart TV. I was familiar with the great picture quality from Sharp sets after viewing Sports on an older Sharp big screen at my local cigar store. Turns out the picture is still great, but programming of the smart portion just doesn't cut it.

The home theater manager was very helpful in showing us the pros and cons of Samsung, LG and Sony. We chose a Sony to replace the sharp . We took the Sony because he made us a deal on an open box unit with 5 years of in home service. I am hopeful this one will work better. We really enjoyed having Netflix direct to the TV through the build in WiFi till it quit working on the Sharp. (one of several glitches we experienced with the Sharp)

I am  hopeful we'll have better luck with this set and I am very hopeful that this round of chemo will get rid of my cancer.

Hope things in your world are going OK.

RT