To be blunt about it, the second half of October and the first half of November kind of sucked. I started my fourth cycle of chemotherapy on October 18 and by October 20th I was pretty miserable. I experienced fatigue on an order of magnitude that I'd not experienced previously plus I had to contend with the usual body aches. Couple that with the fact that the side effect symptoms which usually go away in a couple of days before my next infusion didn't. On October 25 I went in for my 2nd infusion of the cycle and I hadn't even bounced back from my the 18th's yet. The week of the November 1st was even worse because by the end of the week I had contracted a pretty severe cold/flu. Thursday November 4th I had a fever that was about .5 degrees away from putting me in the hospital and I had a CT scan scheduled for that morning. I decided to go ahead with the CT scan despite me not feeling well.
And now for the bad news. November 8th found us back in the doctors office for the usual pre-cycle doctor's appointment. He also had the results of the previous week's CT scan. Unfortunately the results of the CT scan were not what anyone had hoped for. The tumors that had previously been shrinking had stopped shrinking and in fact a couple of them had started growing again (albeit minuscule growth). There were also new "areas of interest" in the same general vicinity as the largest cluster of the original tumors. The long and the short of it is that the first line chemotherapy drugs have stopped working. To continue their use would be futile. Couple that with the fact that first-line drugs cumulative effect on my overall physical well being had me reduced to watching TV on the sofa for 12 hours a day for the previous 3 weeks. All of this being taken into consideration we opted to go try second line of chemotherapy drug called Alimta (Pemetrexed).
Today is November 15 and I had my first infusion of the new drug regiment. The doctor and nurses have all told me that the new drug is much better tolerated than my old regiment, but only time will tell. Their effectiveness is what is important. Another upside to the new drug is that I only have to have it administered once every 21 days.
My lack of writing has been due to the fact that I did not want my physical state of being to transfer into my posting. I try to be as upbeat as possible but the last three weeks had really put me in a bad place. Now that I've had an extra week off and have started something new, I'm feeling positive and my energy levels seem to be back up. I had noticed that I had started to receive messages from people for not updating in a while, so please pardon the interruption. I certainly wasn't trying to hide it or make anyone worry. I just didn't want the words to come out wrong. I'll try to be a little better about keeping this updated in the future, but I didn't want to come off as "Donny Downer." I always hate being the bearer of bad news, but I'm trying to keep this as honest as possible and wanted to be in a better place before I wrote about it. It is what it is and you can only play the hand that you're dealt. As always, thanks to everyone for their support and here's to turning a new page and starting a new chapter.
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