4 down, restaging time

every engineer knows that a minimum of three historical data points is generally required to ascertain a trend. i was cautioned that the effects of chemo on my body would be cumulative and, with the exception of my first treatment (which was in a league of its own!), i can now attest to the fact that this trend does exist. i seem to feel a little bit ickier each time we go through this drill, and the chemo has certainly done its job in knocking down my white blood cells, leaving my count this week even lower than the first concerning dip. so, we're back to the daily neupogen injections.  i've been feeling pinchy twinges of pain in my chest over the past couple weeks and was told that this sensation is the actual cancer decomposing, which is kind of cool... if pain can be cool. :)

i'm planning a playlist for my PET scan next tuesday. the scan process requires you to sit in isolation in a radioactive safe of sorts for two hours or so while you're body's loading up on tracer, then lay 'perfectly still' for about an hour while the scan is conducted (intermingled with a couple of breaks to chug bottles of barium cocktail... yum). staying still is harder than you'd think! the one advantage i have this time around is that my itch is gone; being told you can't move for an hour with ridiculous, lymphoma itching skin sounded like some sort of POW torture. i'm putting a lot of hope into this restaging and want to enter armed with lots of positive music to avoid sliding into any sort of contemplative state of mind while in solitary confinement. suggestions of songs that motivate, inspire and/or rock you?

approaching a fork in the road...

hard to believe it's here already, but tomorrow is chemo round 4. this is the last round before the highly-anticipated PET scan, which will determine my path forward. i was happy to enjoy a couple good days of fresh air, the ocean and laughter before i'm back in hibernation this week.

the hair cut was a success, in that my head seems to be relatively symmetrical with no unexpected mikhail gorbachev-style markings! for your entertainment: a photo we snapped mid-haircut... my 'take that, cancer' face and mohawk. ;) i'll spare you photos of the finished product, as we'll all be seeing more of my bald head than we'd like for the next year or so!

day 1 of 365 (or so)

...in my new life without hair, that is. i decided this morning that today is the day i'll say 'so long' to what hair i have left. i've been amazed over the past few weeks by how much hair there is on a human head (approximately 100,000 strands, says wikipedia)! each day i felt as though i could make a small wig with the hair on my pillow and the bathroom floor alone, yet i still had quite a bit hanging on for awhile.

i'm putting my head in the hands of two reliable barbers: peter and my friend, ashlea, who is visiting from arkansas this week. by making an event of it, i'm hoping it will feel a little less somber. i may force them to have a drink or two, since i can't... and you really can't get this cut wrong. ;)

while i can't be certain of the color or texture of my new hair when it returns, i have been assured that it will grow back. it will likely be curly/wavy and will hopefully still be brown. unfortunately, it may take 2-3 months after the end of chemo for it to start growing and another 3-4 months for it to fill in, leaving me with about a full hair-less year if i finish chemo in february, as planned.

in an effort to look at the bright side (usually my role!), my husband (who shaves his head each morning in the shower) very sweetly suggested that i may like it more than i expect because it will be easy and save me a lot of time on hair drying. :) something tells me that drying my hair each day won't bother me so much anymore...

this fine day last year!

i can't believe i've been married for a year... and what a year it's been. not a day passes that i don't pinch myself and feel thankful for being married to such an absolutely amazing man who makes life so fulfilling. a few weeks ago,  peter and i talked about the fact that we've both spent the last year more excited about being married than we spent the year prior being excited about getting married... and our wedding was the most perfect day ever. peter's sister, amanda, turned our wedding vows into a beautiful piece for our home as an anniversary gift.   

with this ring, i promise to:
always appreciate the experiences, laughter and time we share together;
never allow you take love too lightly or life too seriously;
encourage your independence and celebrate your spirit;

care for you in times of sickness and health.

while i didn't intend to exercise the 'sickness' part of our vows so quickly, my husband certainly rose to the occasion in a major way. little did he know this day last year that he was buying a lemon. ;) we planned to be at the ritz-carlton kapalua in maui next week celebrating this milestone but, due to this crazy twist in the road, we'll be here enjoying the next best thing: being together at our home in bristol.

cancer and i coexisted pretty well together... until chemo came along

as most of you know, i went to the walk-in in july 2009 for some random chest pain that occurred following a business trip to france. to rule out the possibility of a blood clot from flying, i had a CT scan with nothing observed and was sent home. after my CT scan in july 2010 revealed these tumors, we revisited my july 2009 scan and realized that (in retrospect) the cancer had started growing at that point and was likely the cause of my discomfort.

it's amazing to think that from july 2009 - july 2010 this cancer and i coexisted so peacefully (with the exception of my raging skin). i got married with cancer. i took this cancer on some great trips... australia, france, florida, to name a few. we went to endless parties and celebrations together. we learned to sail together. we spent a lot of time at work together. we created countless memories with family and friends together. little did i know i had these masses tagging along for a good part of 2009 and 2010. i never felt sick... in fact i didn't have a single cold during this period! i miraculously avoided the night sweats, fatigue, rib pain and other symptoms that come along with lymphoma. i'd like to credit my body for being strong enough to stave off illness and keep this cancer at bay for so long.

chemo, on the other hand, is a different story. it's funny how the process of getting better is what makes you feel and look sick. if late 2009 and early 2010 were as amazing as they were with tumors in tow, i can't wait for late 2011 and early 2012. this cancer will miss out on some good times!!

thank you!

i didn't fully appreciate how many loyal readers there are out there until the box of fifty bracelets vanished within hours. :) thankfully, they have sent me another hundred... let me know if there is anyone i missed! based on the statistical tracker, roughly 200 of you visit this blog every day (well, monday through friday, dipping to about 75 on the weekends).

thank you... for following along, for posting comments (i love reading them), and most of all, for caring. while i started this blog for practical reasons in an effort to make communicating easier for me, in some weird way it makes me feel a lot less alone going through something that can seem very isolating. i'm so touched each day when i see comments posted and still find both my email and snail-mail boxes full of messages and cards. i expected that your signs of support would taper off once the initial shock of all this passed. i anticipated that the crowd would clear and i'd be here alone pushing through each treatment with a small circle of family and friends who'd be there with me 'til the end. i can't tell you how much your love and support means to me. thanks for caring enough to check in and read this silly little blog each day. i'm so grateful to have such amazing friends and family who care so much.

also, thanks to those of you who way-too-generously contributed to peter's marathon fund. amazingly, our team is now the top fundraiser and he far exceeded his personal fundraising goal. you guys rock!

tomorrow i'm off to chemo round three. my brother, tim, is my 'lucky' chemo buddy and driver this round... an experience, to say the least. you see a lot in the chemo lounge: a lot of entertaining people, a lot of very sick people, a lot of 'price is right' fans watching (loudly) from their personal TVs. something you won't experience much of there is privacy. i'm thankful to have company with me for each visit. round three feels a little brighter for me knowing now that these crazy drugs are doing their job. bring it on, chemo!

'i will fight'

well, september is lymphoma awareness month. for those of you who have been along for the ride, we've certainly gotten outselves a crash course in lymphoma recently! when my mom and i sat in the final 'smart' dermatologist's office learning all of the possible causes of my chronic itch and heard lymphoma on the list of (unlikely) possibilities, i didn't know the first thing about it. over the past few months i have gone from completely lymphoma-ignorant to knowing more about this disease than i ever hoped.

today i got a cool gift in the mail for lymphoma awareness month: a box of 'i will fight' bracelets in the official lymphoma color of lime green. these bracelets first came out of the dear jack foundation with lyrics 'i will fight' from andrew mcmahon's (alleged) favorite song he's ever written, something corporate's watch the sky. in support of young adult leukemia & lymphoma research, i will proudly don an 'i will fight' bracelet... perhaps until i am done fighting.

i have a box of fifty looking for a good home. i'd certainly be proud seeing little green signs of support on the wrists of others. :) if you're interested, shoot me an email with your address and i'll drop you one in the mail.

comedy of errors

sometimes i feel like my medical adventures could easily be a sitcom. over the past week, i had to receive daily injections from home, which led to some funny situations... including peter practicing on a lemon and our friend, paul, giving me a shot in a parked car. yesterday, though, surely topped both of those moments.

after having some trouble breathing (a side effect of the B in ABVD), i had to get a CT scan. for those of you who have had a CT scan, you can picture laying in the cylinder facing the ceiling, with the technicians in a separate room watching the exam through a glass window. i had an IV hooked up to my port to inject dye for the exam and my arms over my head. mid-exam i heard a pop, realized the IV disassembled from the port and felt the IV of dye spraying all over my chest and neck. in a panic that the dye was toxic and now all over me, i started waving my arms frantically, then knocking (banging) on the machine over my head in hopes of getting the attention of the girl behind the glass. i realized later that, although in different rooms, there was a microphone over my head and i could have easily called for help. i'm sure the view (and sound) of me slamming the (very expensive) imaging equipment was priceless. :)

to make matters worse, i was having an off day, and this additional chaos was enough to cause me to start crying... certainly not because i was upset about the dye catastrophe, but was just tired of being at the hospital, getting poked and prodded and not feeling like myself. the poor technician looked completely horrified that, not only had the test fallen apart and i punched her machine, but now thought she had made me cry. amidst tears i manage to utter that i wasn't upset about the dye but just 'tired of having cancer'. mature, i know. :) thankfully (for all of us!), i'm back to normal today... realizing that i have a million things to be thankful for and need to pull up my bootstraps because we've got a long way to go!

we got good news yesterday... three pieces, actually:
1) the CT scan of my lungs was negative
2) my white blood cell count is back up (following all of the awesome vaccine-giving from my family and friends!)
3) although we 'weren't supposed to peek' at yesterday's CT scan to check the cancer, the oncologist reported that the scan showed my tumors are shrinking... already! yes!! if that's not a reason to keep my chin up, i don't know what is. :)

spoke too soon

no sooner did i hit 'post' on my update yesterday than i started to notice my legs hurting and hair on my pillow. oh, well. both are signs that these drugs are working, which is a good thing! i certainly am not declaring this official hair loss yet; but when i noticed wet hair all over my hand following a shower, i realized it was time for my final hair cut . if you look quick, you might think this is a photo of your eleven year-old nephew, but it's just me. ;)

2 down, 10 to go

since the shortest treatment plan of 8 rounds of chemo (alone) isn't on the table anymore, i decided i'd mentally prepare myself for the longest road to avoid disappointment... leaving me with 10 rounds of chemo to go (or 6 rounds plus radiation).

my dad joined me for chemo this week and treatment took over five hours with all of the waiting, etc. unfortunately, my blood work showed that my white blood cell count was 'critically low'. if it remains at this level, unfortunately i will be denied my next chemo treatment, delaying completion of this process. i understand that while chemotherapy directly targets cancer cells, it also decreases bone marrow activity resulting in lowered blood cell counts within the body.  i am now receiving a daily injection to stimulate my bone marrow to develop more white blood cells. the side effect is that the injection can cause bone pain; thankfully, i haven't experienced that yet. i'll go back on tuesday for my blood to be retested to see how the injections are working. in the meantime, i was told to be extra careful about germs (avoiding public places, unnecessary contact with other people, etc.)

on a positive note, emend has changed my world!! this week was much more tolerable without the ridiculous nausea. (thank you, merck!) ...and, i still have my hair. :)