The Home Stretch

Greetings All,

I apologize I have been remiss in posting lately. I have to say it is easy for days to get away from me at a time. I'm now a week past treatment number 6, and there are only 2 more on the horizon! I am slowly getting back to normal, or what has become normal to me. I still kind of live with my stomach being a little sensitive, not having full strength, and being pretty absent minded (I'd like to blame that on the chemo but I'm not sure that's fair). I have a few thoughts to share with everyone on how things have been going:

Treatment day is becoming quite a mental battle. I wake up the morning of and usually I don't feel too bad right off the bat. As I start to eat breakfast I start to feel the nausea creeping in. Every sight and smell as soon as I get in the car starts to trigger nausea. In the following days I even had to switch the water bottle I usually use with my wife's because just drinking from the bottle I always use at treatment was starting to get to me. While at the hospital I have a lot of moments where I feel close to losing my cookies. The nurse has asked me a couple times if I would like one of my anti-nausea that also is a "stress reliever". To be honest I haven't taken one of them since I've started treatment and I don't plan on taking one no matter how I feel. I'm not a big fan of drugs in general and habit forming narcotics give me the heebie-jeebies. I have been going to treatment alone because it is best for everyone but I'm thinking for the last 2 I'll be bringing someone along for company and to drive home.

All the nurses in Oncology have been incredible but I have to give a lot of credit to one nurse in particular whose name is Sue. She has been the one who has taken care of me for 4 out of my 6 treatments and she is the best. It is just not the same when she is not there. I think part of it for her is that she has a son that is close to my age but she has been a definite gift and I owe her a lot of thanks.

I just can't seem to bring myself to start thinking about the end of treatments. My wife and I have been joking about what we'll do with all this extra time on our hands this summer when I'm finally done with treatment and she's done expressing milk for our daughter (that's another blog, another time, another place). But in the process of things I really don't spend a lot of time actually thinking about being done. I guess it's mostly because I won't believe I'm done until that last PET scan, that last Radiation session, that final appointment when they say it's gone. Until then I can't think about being done because I have to still face the possibility that 8 treatments won't be the end. If I came to 8 thinking I'm done and it turns out I'm not that would be a bunch of 4 letter words. I'm trusting that won't happen but I keep it in the back of my mind.

I'll close like I usually do, thanking all of you for your thoughts and prayers, and your comments. As we head into, hopefully, the last 5 weeks of Chemo I can't say enough about how much everyone's spoken and unspoken support means to me and my family.

Peace,
Ben

Making Progress!

Greetings All,

Well treatment number 5 has come and gone. I'm down to 3 left, at least I'm pretty sure we have 3 left. The most important news of the week is that I got the results of my chest CT back. The tumor has shrunk from 4.4 cm x 6.5 cm to 3.5 cm x 1.1 cm!!

My oncologist was very happy with the progress so I can't complain. I'm not exactly a math wizard but by my calculations that means the tumor has shrunk by more than half the size it was originally. It does give you a little mental boost but treatments are still tough. It's little things like today being Super Bowl Sunday, a day I normally look forward to good football and a lot of eating but nothing sounds good to my stomach today. Overall I'm feeling better on day 3 than I normally have been feeling. Day 3 usually entails me sleeping all day and feeling pretty down but I'm not doing so bad mentally and I'm surprisingly concscious.

Not much else to report. I wanted to share the good news from the scan and as an added bonus I finally uploaded a haircut picture for all to enjoy. I'm thinking the mohawk works!!

Peace,
Ben