A Weirdly Normal Week

I'm writing this on a Friday of a weirdly normal week. I had no medical appointments this week nor did any cancer treatments cause me to feel lousy. I worked a normal 40-hour week, attending meetings, making pastoral visits, and wrestling with sermon preparation. Almost two weeks after the end of chemotherapy, I'm feeling a little bit better every day.

I went on my 4-mile running loop this morning. I still can't run the whole thing, but the sections that I jog are getting a little longer and the sections I walk a little shorter. I don't get out of breath going up the stairs. Since I am no longer severely immunocompromised, I did the grocery shopping for the family today for the first time in four months (but I do still wear a KN-95 mask). I haven't completely left the effects of chemo behind. The hair I lost won't come back for months. My fingernails and toenails turned yellow and are slowly growing back out again. But those are minor, and I'm grateful to feel the best I have for months. I'm most happy that food tastes right again and, because I don't have mouth sores, I can eat it! And I have been! I am TOTALLY enjoying every single thing I eat. I've gained back a few of the pounds I lost during chemo.

This brief window of normalcy has been so good. Radiation treatments begin next week, on Tuesday, May 3. While the side effects aren't as intense as chemotherapy, it does require daily visits to the clinic. After five weeks of radiation treatments, I'll finally have surgery to remove the tumor.

Finally, it does feel strange to have been through so many weeks of intense chemotherapy, and then for it to just be over with no obvious or visible results. Hopefully, those drugs killed a whole lot of cancer cells over those months. And hopefully the radiation will do the same.

A Change in the Treatment Plan

I had six medical appointments last week, including spending two and a half hours at the clinic on Wednesday afternoon.

The end result is that there has been a change to my treatment plan. I will not be having surgery on Thursday, April 21. Instead, I soon will begin radiation treatments. Surgery will be scheduled after radiation, later in June.

Initially, this change left my head spinning as I was preparing in a variety of ways for surgery. But ultimately this is a better plan. There is at least one place (and maybe others) where the surgeon will not be able to get negative margins when removing the tumor. The radiation treatments make it more likely that the tumor will not grow back in those places. Also, I would not be a candidate for radiation if the cancer had spread. But, because I have no other detectable tumors, I do not have "advanced disease," and thus radiation can be included in the overall treatment plan.

Once they start, the radiation treatments are five days a week for five weeks. The appointments are short. It takes just a few minutes to zap the tumor with the radiation. The side effects are not as intense as chemotherapy. I'm told the main side effect is fatigue. I think I'll take that over mouth sores, nausea, tasteless food, and neutropenic fevers that send me to the hospital.

If I were still doing chemo, today would be the first day of infusions. But because I've finished chemo, I didn't have to go in this morning! That feels fantastic. I'm going to be shaking off the effects of the chemo for a few months. I can tell that my red blood cells/hemoglobin remain low. Still, hopefully from here I'll get stronger in body--that is a priority for me, along with radiation treatments.

Finally, based on absolutely nothing scientific or medical, I have this deep sense inside that, after the radiation and surgery to remove the tumor, no more cancer will be found on future scans. Perhaps it's wishful thinking. But that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

(Almost) Post-Round 6, What's Next, Eyebrow Update

Well, I've just about made it through the round 6 nadir. I did not develop an infection/fever that sent me to the hospital last week. What a relief! The mouth sores and assorted other side-effects of round 6 will slowly resolve over the next week or so. I'll feel like chemotherapy is in the rear-view mirror when I start to feel more like myself -- some time in the next week, I hope.

Next week I have six medical appointments. On Tuesday I have another CT and MRI. On Wednesday, I meet with my oncologist as well as my surgeon. 

I'm scheduled to have surgery on Thursday, April 21 to remove the tumor. I'll know a lot more about that surgery after my appointments this week. Needless to say, I'm a little anxious about it all. At the same time, surgery is an important step in getting past this, and so even though I am anxious, I am also pleased that the surgery is happening. I'm planning to be away from work completely for two weeks, possibly more.

The six rounds of chemo definitely had a cumulative impact. I haven't been running for months. I don't have enough red blood cells to carry the oxygen around my body! I've lost weight. I'm weaker in body than I've been in a long time (but not in spirit!). A lot of my hair has fallen out...but not everywhere. It's strange. I still have hairy arms, but my eyelashes are gone. There's still a lot of hair on my legs, but the hair inside my nose is gone (which, by the way, is very annoying).

Oh, and yes, I still have eyebrows. They are very, very thin by now. 

But they are still there!