BEP Round 2 Day 1

And so it begins!!

9:15am O:0 P:0 N:0 T:0

I can honestly say today i woke up feeling 100% normal.  Good way to start the next CHEMO EXTRAVAGANZA!  I got my blood work back, first lets talk about my tumor markers:

AFP Starting [2716.0] Post I/O [855.8]  Now   [454.8]
HCG Starting [503]    Post I/O  [304]    Now   [9]
LDH Starting [290]    Post I/O  [220]    Nos   [397]

Ok so a first lets talk LDH, this is basically body inflammation level i was never all that high even with the primary.  However, I did ask the nurse about why it when UP... she basically said its the chemo causing all that inflammation in your body as it attacks the cancer cells.

Next, AFP.. this is really the highest of the numbers.  Its always been the highest and while it is going down it is certianly not tracking to its half like.  So we can gather two things from this, its is DOWNWARD trending which is fantastic.  And the second is that oboviously I stll have some active cells in my body producing AFP but we have 2 (maybe 3) more rounds of chemo to whoop up on it so I am ok with the number I guess. I was really hoping for a sub 100 number but oh well (that would have been where it was if it was tracking like it should). I made a sheet that calculates the daily half life decay of each element and tracks it over time so I can compare its projected path with what we are seeing.  This allows me to track how well the chemo is responding and how "dead" everything is inside since after its all dead it should track 100% to the observed decay curve.  See Graph:

Finaly, HCG has dropped off to nearly normal levels and probably will be by the end of this round if not sooner. (its the bottom tracking curve on the graph) It should be lower strickly speaking from the tumor decay rate but its going way down that's all that matters.

The second bit of news comes from my blood counts.  Normal Range for WBC is 4,000-10,500.  If you recall last week I dropped down to 1000! with my Neutrophills being 100! which is crazy low.  Well good news is that the nuepogen really knocked it out of the park.  My WBC is 32,500 so I am chocked full of white blood cell fun! 

The other white blood cell marker that's important is your neutophil count, normal range is 1,800-7,800 and mine had dropped to 100! So now after all those wonderful shots its up to 23,400 HHAHAHAHA. So basically my immune system is super powerful right now :-P  Made a joke to the nurse I should get some taco bell and eat it while swimming in the sewer HA.  She made a comment that I have the immune system of 3-4 people right now all shoved inside me! hahahahah maybe if there is a bad flu or something going around we should just keep neupogen on hand to boost us up :-P just kidding!!!

Anyway what that says is that 4 shots of nuepogen is probably overkill, 3 maybe even 2 would be enough so we can keep that in mind as we move forward..I will update later once I get some E/P in me!

Me in the chair today, excited about day 1... Cancer BRING IT!!! (Wife says I also look like maybe I am scared or something is about to attack me.. guess "jazz hands" don't come out well in still photos)

12:25pm O:2 P:0 N:1 T:8
So I have finished both my E&P today, just finishing up fluids.  The benadryl really knocked me out, I slept through the whole day's treatment basically.  I woke up a few times here or there but it did kick my butt pretty well.  We aren't going to do the Bleo today, I kept trying to get them to switch the Bleo days to Monday but that never happened.  So Bleo, Etoposide, and Cisplatnim tomorrow should be a long day... Oh and I get nuepogen shots on bleo days so wow that should be a busy day!

I will up date later in the day with how I feel once the premeds knock off... I put N at a 1 simply  because I should be starving right now and the thought of food isn't appetizing at all.  Hopefully that fads too so I can get some calories.  TTYL all!

2:15pm O:1 P:0 N:3 T:2
Here are the meds I am taking, premeds and then the E/P i keep forgetting to grab a pick of the Bleo since its only on there for like 15 minutes it slips my mind but I will try and remember tomorrow.

Premeds:

Cisplatin:

Etoposide:

That's the cocktail of fun for the week!



6:35pm O:1 P:0 N:1 T:2
I just woke up from an unplanned/unexpected ~4.5 hour "nap".  I remember working on the computer, I "kinda" remember eating some lunch though by how messing I ate it (ie the surrounding area) i think I started to fall asleep while eating it.  Now this isn't the first time during chemo I have had an impromptu-nap basically sneak up and wipe me out for a couple of hours. But normally those are like 1-2 hour things, this one I was out for EASILY 4 hours maybe a bit more.  Now this could just be that my body is tired and decided he needed some sleep, I haven't been sleeping all that well recently.  Or it could be this round of chemo is taking a bit more UMPH out of me than it did last time. Or it could be the Benadryl pre-med but it was only 25mg.  If you put that together with the time I slept during the Chemo session I "napped" for nearly 8 hours today!  On the plus side I feel fine, I don't have any nausea (again I rated it as a 1because I have only had a couple of tacos for breakfast at 7:30am and nothing else so I should be starving but I am not... and nothing even sounds good.)  I am going to mention this to my nurse/Dr. tomorrow during my session.  My Dr is at the main clinic on Tues/Thurs so its a good chance to get a face to face question/answer session with him.  Guess I am going to have to charge all of today to "sick" time at work because I didn't get a chance to do any work aside from read/respond to a few emails.