7.2 Two Down, Five to Go!

The glorious weekend is over and Monday starts another week of chemo and radiation.

Before I go on, I have to thank Gail and Mike.  On Sunday night, Mike P. sent me a cartoon.  I’m sure he didn’t know how perfect the timing was, but Sunday nights are really tense, leading up to the start of another cycle every Monday.  The cartoon really made us laugh.  Thanks, Mike.

I reached out to Gail to say hello.  We traded some general stuff back and forth, she sent me a photo of her daughter and her wonderful little granddaughter, and then she told me I was in her prayers and those of her Bible study group. Total strangers, praying for me and asking her how I’m doing. Thanks, Gail!

People have really boosted my spirits by reaching out and just telling me that they are thinking of us.  Plus, we’re getting some really good things for our freezer, and some things that don’t last long enough to make it to the freezer, like blueberry lemon cake. You can’t understand how good all of that makes me feel. Thanks Art, Bobby, Mark, Patty, Ric, Chris & Paul, Joann & Rick, and others who I might be forgetting!  (Blame it on chemo brain if I forgot to mention you!)

And of course, I have to thank Suzy.  She’s right there with me, every day, nearly every minute.  I’m the one who has the cancer, but we are both in this together.  Thanks, Suzy.  My love grows every minute.

I guess I have to invoke the Ring Theory (I can bitch out to others) as I feel like I’m going to rant a bit.  Here is the link to the article: Ring Theory. It’s been a tough week.

Monday:  The chemo was tough.  It surprised me because, although lengthy, it went well the first week.  They start out by giving me 5 different drugs to suppress any allergic reactions or nausea.  They reduced the dose on one of them (good old-fashioned Benadryl), as it kinds of knocks you out.  Then, the plan was to drip in two different chemo drugs – Taxol for 60 minutes and Carboplatin for 30 minutes.  At best, the process will take two and half hours or so.  They started the Taxol and after about 5 minutes, out of nowhere, I had trouble breathing.  Really struggling.  I hit the emergency button and 6 nurses came into my little itty-bitty room.  They stopped the drip, gave me some more Benadryl, and gave me oxygen to stabilize my breathing.  It was terrifying.  I have never experienced this before – the breathing, or all of the attention.  All this with my cloth facemask on, making it even harder to breathe.  (When they realized I was trying to keep it on, they told me it was OK not to wear it.  The world of covid, where I’m struggling to breathe but still think I need to keep that facemask on.  They also said that reactions like mine usually happen the first week if they’re going to happen, so they were caught by surprise.)  Once I was stabilized, they restarted Taxol, really slow.  It all took 4 hours to complete.  Made our Monday even longer than usual.

Earlier they had told us that starting next week, only patients are allowed in the hospital due to the covid spike (see Suzy’s F’ing Covid post).  When I started having trouble breathing, Suzy handed me the panic button and made me press it myself.  Later she told me that she wanted to make sure I knew how to do it, since she won’t be there next week.  I’ll be on my own.  Suzy will be waiting in the car, not knowing what is going on.  I’m sure the nurses will know about this week’s event and will give me extra attention, but Suzy won’t be there and it scares the hell out of me.  To steal the main theme of the F-ing Covid post — People, just wear your mask and stay home so we can get past this stuff!  We wear ours, but since not everyone does, Suzy can’t be with me.  Pisses us both off.

Tuesday:  Tuesday was better, physical therapy working on my neck muscles, a meeting with a social worker, and of course, more radiation.  I’m starting to have a few side effects – I have a really bad “sun burn” on my neck and my salivary glands are not as active.  The physical therapist is really skilled and makes me feels much better, working to reduce any impacts to my range of motion.  He asked what my goal was, and I said to play golf again.  He said no problem, we can get there.

Wednesday:  I had a troubling experience (that’s right, more bitching!).  It wasn’t a big thing, and I’m not really sure why it bothers me so much. I fell asleep – that’s all that happened. The radiation is painless, but it’s very confining and mentally exhausting.  They reposition me and the machine 5 times to complete the treatment.  The radiation beam is shared between four rooms, so “waiting for the beam” is part of the process.  I had to wait what felt like an hour (really like 8 or 10 minutes) in one of the positions – long enough where I actually fell asleep.  Wtf is happening to me?  I was actually asleep. I feel like I crossed over some line, a line I don’t understand.  How could I fall asleep during something so terrible?  Suzy was waiting outside for me (reference the F‘ing Covid discussion), and when I got to the car, I was in a bit of a daze.  We started driving home, and I just broke down.  Maybe I just crossed over from someone who has cancer to being a cancer patient.  I don’t know why falling asleep upset me so much, but it still does.  I guess we can endure a lot and still get used to it, but I never expected this.

Thursday:  Tomorrow is the end of week two.  I’m beginning to feel some of the side effects – extremely dry mouth, very thick saliva, sore throat, my mouth hurts, my tastes are starting to change, my voice is getting hoarse, and my neck feels sunburned.  The past couple of days, I have begun to realize that the pain must be coming.  I have anti-nausea meds already for chemo-related issues, and today the radiation oncologist gave me Gabapentin, which helps by changing the way your nerves sense pain.  Gabapentin seems pretty powerful.  I took it last night before bed, and was really dizzy and hungover this morning.  They also prescribed liquid lidocaine – before I eat, I spray that in my mouth and swallow and it will numb by mouth and throat and enable me to eat.  Uh-oh!!!  This is getting too real.  Dr. P is careful to share details just before we need them, not too soon (he says patients worry too much and get overwhelmed about things that may not happen if he gives us everything at once). At the beginning, he told us to think big picture, that there was time for the details later.  I guess that’s where we are now.

I’m really dumping the past few days.  (Ring Theory – comfort in, dump out, remember?)  My apologies, but it is what it is (Donald Trump needs to know that’s an acceptable use of the phrase “it is what it is”).  The weekend is coming and week two is nearly over, so hopefully I will be able to get more positive.

Friday:  We saw the radiation oncologist yesterday.  It’s hard to understand how radiation works.  Dr. A (sidekick/resident of Dr. P) brought up the 3D image of my head and neck.  He showed us the fields that are identified for different levels of radiation.  Basically, there are 3 different amounts of radiation that target the cancer.  The idea is to kill the known tumors and cancerous lymph nodes by using the highest power, and use lesser and lesser amounts on the fringe areas.  They hit good areas like spinal cord, teeth and arteries, with as little as possible.  Proton radiation is different from other radiations in that it can be programmed to stop at a specific place – instead of shooting all the way in one side and out the other, it stops where it’s focused.  That helps keep the good things from getting damaged.  Unlike surgery which removes the cancer cells, as the radiation kills the cells, they just slough off over time.

I’m the kind of person who thinks about numbers, percents, etc. all the time.  If I’m reading a book, what percent do I have left (and I don’t have a Kindle, so I have to figure it out).  If we’re driving, how many mph are we averaging and what time, to the minute, do I think we’ll arrive. After the third position under the mask, I’m 60% done with a radiation session.  Tomorrow, I will be just about 30 percent done with the treatments.  Of course, I’m ignoring the recovery period, but that seems a long way off at this point.  Like Dr. P says, we can get to those details when we get there.

On a more positive note, Lee and Heidy are coming over tonight and we’re going to put up the Christmas tree and BBQ.  It’ll be a great way to end the week and start the weekend.  When I worked, weekends seemed great – no work, no conference calls.  Now weekends are really GREAT!  No treatments!

We’ll get to Monday when we get there.