Treatment 9: Chemo

9/12 chemo treatments are complete marking the 3/4 mark.  All has been going well.  I am off of the nausea medications, except for the one given intravenously before chemo.  The only medications I have been taking are emeprazole (which I hope to get off when chemo is complete) and biotene (which is a mouthwash which helps with dry mouth, typically I only use this for the first week after chemo treatments after I brush my teeth).  Many people have asked what happens after I finish the chemo treatments, so I finally asked the doctor about that today.  After the final treatment I will have one more PET/CT scan to ensure the cancer is still gone.  I can have my catho-port removed after the results come back negative.  For the next year I will have full body check-ups every three months to check for any secondary cancers.  PET/CT scans are not typical in the check-up process for those who have had lymphoma unless something is obviously wrong in one of the Doctor visits.  The second year I will have checkups every six months and then once a year from then on out.  

The only abnormalities in blood work this time were high heart rate (115, which is normal for me and appearently not so bad because I'm young) and a very, very, very low neutrophil level of 80 (a good level is 2,000 and a level to begin worrying about infections is 1,000) resulting in a very terrible immune system.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Treatment 6: Chemo (Half Way Done)

Last Friday marked the sixth of twelve Chemo treatments complete.  All has been going really well and I feel as though I have finally mastered the technique of after treatment recovery (knock on wood).  I've has no signs of nausea and the only recognizable side effects left after treatments have been a strong dislike of ice and a constant after taste in the mouth that usually lasts for a week.  I have not had any recurrence of mouth sores in the last two treatments which has been a major blessing.  In addition to being halfway complete through the chemo cycle I was also able to receive the full report of the PET Scan from two weeks ago which stated I was responding "excellent" to treatments (a term not used too frequently) and that all (or most) of the lymphoma (cancer) is gone. I also got off one of my medications to help lower my heart rate this week. Life has definitely been going well.  Still have a low blood count and visits from those who are healthy odds ...
Read more

Cancer Blog

It has been an adventure this last week and a half with a lot of new information.  Last week I was diagnosed with Nodular Sclerosis Hodgkin's disease which is the most common type of Lymphoma (cancer).  It is very treatable with Chemo over an extended period of time, probably 6 months.  The treatment is given every other week.  They are working on determining the stage of the cancer through a full body PET scan which will happen tomorrow, and a bone marrow biopsy.  The purpose of these scans and biopsy is the see how many and how large the lymph nodes are in the body.  The bone marrow biopsy will determine if the cancer is also in the bone marrow. Because of the extended treatment I was released from serving a full time mission in the Florida Jacksonville Mission.  Most updates of what is going on regarding the cancer will come through this blog page.  There will be a very positive outcome in the end.  No more cancer!
Read more