Short post today, just wanted to let you all know I am feeling MUCH better today. Eating pretty normally now, energy levels are still a bit low and I tire easier than "normal" but aside from that I am doing decent. I have a CBC today, and I will post when I know the results but fingers crossed my counts are good because neupogen gives me fever and wonderful bone pain I have to treat medically which wipes me out.
Oh btw its MOVING DAY, or at least the first day of it. Tonight we are going to move a few things and get the place staged and ready for tomorrow's big move day. I will post how the CBC turned out later today.
UPDATE:
Well Boo, my white blood cells crashed AGAIN. Nearly back down to zero =( So its back to neupogen shots for me over the weekend. This time though I know what to expect, gonna keep on the Ibuprofen and I have my Norco to supplement it when I need to so I should be fine. Guess the Bleo really wipes out my cells, the Dr/Nurse again seemed confused when they asked me how I felt and I said the best so far of this Round honestly... and they don't see how that's possible with my blood counts so low HAHAHA.
Oh well, so nuepogen and pain killers will be my med of choice this weekend!
UPDATE 2:
So for the first time since I started this "cancer fun" I finally got a full statement from my treatment center. Its interesting because it shows both last years treatment/cost profile and this year's with my new oh-so-nice insurance. Basically for all you out there wondering, each DAY I sit down in a chemo chair it costs $4,500<->$2,500 depending on what I am getting that day and what pre-meds etc I get. That's each.... freaking... day!!!
So previously, last year with my normal person insurance before my company decided to go bonkers and change things around. I would pay the co-pay visit cost of $40, they would get a "Contract Discount" which I assume is an insurance company and hospital basically agreeing on LESS than the full amount.. and the insurance would cover the rest usually in the $1K-$3K range each day. Now, however with this new plan where we cover everything up to $3,500 then they start kicking in 80% until we hit $8k (which wont' take long to hit) the bills are getting crazy. I currently have over $12,500 outstanding on my balance sheet right now and I haven't even finished Round 2.. and I have a Round 3 and maybe 4 to look forward too. I have told their billing department (though I haven't heard back yet) that I can give them whatever X amount each month they take out of my check for the HSA and not a penny more. I refuse to put cancer treatment on a credit card or take out a loan... I paid all that crud out of pocket last year and I don't' want to do that again. Its just crazy to me that these treatments are so much money. I suppose its good I got my self out of debt before I was hit with Cancer because it seems like I am going to be paying on this for quite a while. Fun fun!
Friday, January 20, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 10
I wanted to post an update since its been a couple of days to basically let everyone know how the "Hell-Week recovery" was going. The first round I had a rough couple of days followed by stark improvement day to day as the week went on, with me feeling kinda normal by Wed and basically back to my own snarky self by Thursday give or take (within reason at least).
However this round has been much rougher on me, and I share this because as the chemo rounds "add up" in my system this will happen. So for example, we tried to baby my stomach as much as possible the last day or so of hell week chemo and while it helped a bit at first we ended up down basically the same path of digestive system mutiny as the first round. In addition, this time its lasting quite a bit longer. I am STILL fighting my stomach on nearly everything I put in my mouth even water. Have you ever stuffed your self on something you knew was going to make you feel bad like Taco bell or something you know causes you stomach problems? When you are done eating, forcing every bit you can you can still kinda feel it up in your esophagus and when you burp or move the wrong way you can kinda feel the food right there. In addition, you have this really overly heavy feeling in your stomach and it protests with gurgling etc etc for hours. Since you have so much food in your stomach you also get very physically drained (think a really heavy lunch then back at your desk at work... eyes weary). Now imagine all of this for someone who ate a 120 calorie soup and some water!!! Every time I eat anything my digestive system pretends its the end of the world. In addition to that, my taste buds are totally out of wake so almost nothing is actually appetizing to eat it all tastes like bland blah crud or worse turns my stomach.
Now all of this has led to me not being able to eat much of anything, and certainly not much of it when I do so I am seriously calorie deficient I am sure which is adding to the overall fatigue and cruddy feeling. I am at a bit of a loss to "turn the corner" on this one honestly, if I could do a fwe days of 2500->3500 calories and get it moving through my system perhaps I could make a come back but I can't seem to stomach it. One idea I had was to get a bunch of those Ensure meal replacement things and just try and force myself to drink X every Y hours to add up to a decent calorie intake for the day.. but those aren't exactly balanced meals and they are crazy loaded with sugar.
The other thing I have noticed about this rounds recovery time is that last time if I felt tired, and slept I would at least feel marginally better when I woke up. So sleeping = feeling better, this time that's not really the case my tiredness is much more deep and profound such that sleeping doesn't really aid or cure it. Again this could be both the added round of chemo and the lack of calories adding to this effect I am not sure.
Now on to the good news, I do actually feel a bit better today and I am going to focus on eating as much as I can and drinking water etc etc .. the normal drill. I really just wish there was some magic bullet.. take X pill or eat a bunch of Y and it would solve this but that doesn't seem to be the case. I am holding in there though, and I KNOW I will feel better eventually its just taking more time than I would like!!!!
BTW my fingers are crossed that my Dr decides 3 rounds is enough, 1 more round of this is more than enough for me I think hahahaha the thought of 2 more rounds is a bit much to take right now but I know I will do whatever is needed....
However this round has been much rougher on me, and I share this because as the chemo rounds "add up" in my system this will happen. So for example, we tried to baby my stomach as much as possible the last day or so of hell week chemo and while it helped a bit at first we ended up down basically the same path of digestive system mutiny as the first round. In addition, this time its lasting quite a bit longer. I am STILL fighting my stomach on nearly everything I put in my mouth even water. Have you ever stuffed your self on something you knew was going to make you feel bad like Taco bell or something you know causes you stomach problems? When you are done eating, forcing every bit you can you can still kinda feel it up in your esophagus and when you burp or move the wrong way you can kinda feel the food right there. In addition, you have this really overly heavy feeling in your stomach and it protests with gurgling etc etc for hours. Since you have so much food in your stomach you also get very physically drained (think a really heavy lunch then back at your desk at work... eyes weary). Now imagine all of this for someone who ate a 120 calorie soup and some water!!! Every time I eat anything my digestive system pretends its the end of the world. In addition to that, my taste buds are totally out of wake so almost nothing is actually appetizing to eat it all tastes like bland blah crud or worse turns my stomach.
Now all of this has led to me not being able to eat much of anything, and certainly not much of it when I do so I am seriously calorie deficient I am sure which is adding to the overall fatigue and cruddy feeling. I am at a bit of a loss to "turn the corner" on this one honestly, if I could do a fwe days of 2500->3500 calories and get it moving through my system perhaps I could make a come back but I can't seem to stomach it. One idea I had was to get a bunch of those Ensure meal replacement things and just try and force myself to drink X every Y hours to add up to a decent calorie intake for the day.. but those aren't exactly balanced meals and they are crazy loaded with sugar.
The other thing I have noticed about this rounds recovery time is that last time if I felt tired, and slept I would at least feel marginally better when I woke up. So sleeping = feeling better, this time that's not really the case my tiredness is much more deep and profound such that sleeping doesn't really aid or cure it. Again this could be both the added round of chemo and the lack of calories adding to this effect I am not sure.
Now on to the good news, I do actually feel a bit better today and I am going to focus on eating as much as I can and drinking water etc etc .. the normal drill. I really just wish there was some magic bullet.. take X pill or eat a bunch of Y and it would solve this but that doesn't seem to be the case. I am holding in there though, and I KNOW I will feel better eventually its just taking more time than I would like!!!!
BTW my fingers are crossed that my Dr decides 3 rounds is enough, 1 more round of this is more than enough for me I think hahahaha the thought of 2 more rounds is a bit much to take right now but I know I will do whatever is needed....
Monday, January 16, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 8
So I survived the weekend. It was pretty bad at times, fighting mostly stomach and nausea related issues and just overall crazy tired. What's odd about the "tiredness" is that I could be at a T:6 and sleep for a few hours and wake up and feel like I got no sleep at all. And as nice as we were to my stomach eating light things, it still chose to rebel pretty bad this weekend. I wouldn't say worse than last hell week's weekend recovery time but just different. So on Saturday I mostly slept all day, I woke up to eat/drink/take pills and be somewhat awake for short periods of time but most of the time I spent knocked out. Sunday I was a tiny bit more active but being awake also exposed me more to my stomach problems so it was a mixed bag. As for today I do feel better overall, but my body/mind still aren't cooperating 100% yet. For those of you out there asking about the mental impacts of chemo they became much more clear this weekend and toward the end of hell week. Having a conversation sometimes it was hard to keep my train of thought or come up with a word I wanted to say. And doing little things on the internet or responding to work emails required MUCH more effort mentally to stay focused and get my thoughts out than normal.
As for new symptoms/side effects, I do have a bit more ringing in my ears but its still pretty rare and certainly not constant or annoying just yet. My pinky fingers are showing signs of "numbness" or tingling which peaked on friday and seems to be a bit better by today.
On the lighter side of things, Jenn and I got the keys to our new place yesterday. So the moving shall commence soon! We are still packing up here at the house, and really most of it will happen next weekend with the help of her parents and I think her cousins but it will be nice to get into the new place.
12:00pm O:3 P:0 N:2 T:2
So my Bleo dose is at 2pm today, where they will draw blood and see if I need any neupogen so I will update with the status of that as well. Once I get there and get all settled I will do another post. I did unfortunately lose another ~7.5 lbs over the hell week recovery weekend so I am sure my nurse is gonna
give me a hard time about that HAHAHA.
8:00pm O:2 P:0 N:2 T:5
Sorry I didn't update sooner, its been a busy day. So my Bleo treatment went fine, uneventful. My cell counts came back "ok" not great, still suppressed but not bottomed out like that one time. We are going to draw blood twice a week to find crashes so we can stay ahead of it with neupogen at least that's the plan. I am still having stomach issues but I think they are starting to clear, I have been able to eat a bit more today so that's good. I really want to start getting a bit more work done, especially since last week whooped me up so much, and I have some things I really need to do this week (and some tonight) so I am hoping I can get that all done. Nothing crazy urgent, thankfully my team back at work really stepped up and got our delivery out without me there which was so great of them, but I don't want to slip too far behind on stuff because there is always a "new" problem around the corner! As this week progresses I will start to feel more normal, and I am even hoping to go into work maybe Friday for a little while both to sync up my work and to say hi to everyone. When you spend 50-60 hours or more a week with a bunch of people its very odd to NOT see them all the time I feel very secluded and cut off quarantined to the house HAHAHA.
As for new symptoms/side effects, I do have a bit more ringing in my ears but its still pretty rare and certainly not constant or annoying just yet. My pinky fingers are showing signs of "numbness" or tingling which peaked on friday and seems to be a bit better by today.
On the lighter side of things, Jenn and I got the keys to our new place yesterday. So the moving shall commence soon! We are still packing up here at the house, and really most of it will happen next weekend with the help of her parents and I think her cousins but it will be nice to get into the new place.
12:00pm O:3 P:0 N:2 T:2
So my Bleo dose is at 2pm today, where they will draw blood and see if I need any neupogen so I will update with the status of that as well. Once I get there and get all settled I will do another post. I did unfortunately lose another ~7.5 lbs over the hell week recovery weekend so I am sure my nurse is gonna
give me a hard time about that HAHAHA.
8:00pm O:2 P:0 N:2 T:5
Sorry I didn't update sooner, its been a busy day. So my Bleo treatment went fine, uneventful. My cell counts came back "ok" not great, still suppressed but not bottomed out like that one time. We are going to draw blood twice a week to find crashes so we can stay ahead of it with neupogen at least that's the plan. I am still having stomach issues but I think they are starting to clear, I have been able to eat a bit more today so that's good. I really want to start getting a bit more work done, especially since last week whooped me up so much, and I have some things I really need to do this week (and some tonight) so I am hoping I can get that all done. Nothing crazy urgent, thankfully my team back at work really stepped up and got our delivery out without me there which was so great of them, but I don't want to slip too far behind on stuff because there is always a "new" problem around the corner! As this week progresses I will start to feel more normal, and I am even hoping to go into work maybe Friday for a little while both to sync up my work and to say hi to everyone. When you spend 50-60 hours or more a week with a bunch of people its very odd to NOT see them all the time I feel very secluded and cut off quarantined to the house HAHAHA.
Friday, January 13, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 5
8:05am O:4 P:2 N:5 T:5
Moving slow this morning again, just overall flu-like feeling of tiredness and being drained. I am very hungry but my stomach isn't in a state where eating would be good. Once I get pre-meds in me and things settle down I will try and eat something. Last day of the hell week, just need to hold out through it and I will be done with the worst part of Round 2! Oh they are drawing blood to check for my levels too just in case we need to do some nuepogen shots to boost me back up.
9:45am O:2 P:1 N:2 T:3
Feeling better, got pre-meds. Also my Dr added a new med to the mix, its a longer acting anti-nausea kinda like Emend that will last me through the weekend. Last hell week, my weekend after was pretty hard so he says this should help taper me off a bit lighter. Got my blood counts back and they are "ok" HGB/Red are fine... platelets are holding around 80ish since the start of chemo so not great but doing ok. WBC etc are suppressed but still in the "low-normal" range so we aren't going to do the nuepogen over the weekend.
12:30pm O:1 P:1 N:2 T:6
HELL WEEK 2 DONE! I am back home now, I feel "ok" but I know that's the pre-meds talking. I am very tired still though just wiped in general. I went ahead and charged the rest of the day to sick time, I need to just sleep and focus on making it through the weekend and recover. I am going to try and kick it up a bit next week work wise and knock out some unit tests. I have a great team at work supporting me and they really picked up some of my stuff this week. Thanks so much guys/gals! I am going to try and keep my meals very light and mild this weekend and avoid the horrible stomach issues I had coming down off last hell week. So I realized today that if I only have to do 3 Rounds I am more than half way done!!!! And even if my Dr decides I need a 4th I am still halfway done with the hell weeks so... starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (at least for this section of treatment). Pick of the day, sorry I was going to try and shoot a jovial silly one but honestly this reflects more how I fell so might as well be honest so many bags hooked up to me! hahahaha
9:30pm O:5 P:1 N:6 T:6
At least its predictable. Back to the crappy nighttime feeling. However, at the end of last hell week I had to do xmas eve and xmas stuff... this time I don't have to do anything so I plan to sleep.. take pills and drink water etc and nothing else. Just gonna shut down for a couple of days and try and recover. I may or may not post until my Bleo treatment monday depending on how I fell.
9:45am O:2 P:1 N:2 T:3
Feeling better, got pre-meds. Also my Dr added a new med to the mix, its a longer acting anti-nausea kinda like Emend that will last me through the weekend. Last hell week, my weekend after was pretty hard so he says this should help taper me off a bit lighter. Got my blood counts back and they are "ok" HGB/Red are fine... platelets are holding around 80ish since the start of chemo so not great but doing ok. WBC etc are suppressed but still in the "low-normal" range so we aren't going to do the nuepogen over the weekend.
12:30pm O:1 P:1 N:2 T:6
HELL WEEK 2 DONE! I am back home now, I feel "ok" but I know that's the pre-meds talking. I am very tired still though just wiped in general. I went ahead and charged the rest of the day to sick time, I need to just sleep and focus on making it through the weekend and recover. I am going to try and kick it up a bit next week work wise and knock out some unit tests. I have a great team at work supporting me and they really picked up some of my stuff this week. Thanks so much guys/gals! I am going to try and keep my meals very light and mild this weekend and avoid the horrible stomach issues I had coming down off last hell week. So I realized today that if I only have to do 3 Rounds I am more than half way done!!!! And even if my Dr decides I need a 4th I am still halfway done with the hell weeks so... starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (at least for this section of treatment). Pick of the day, sorry I was going to try and shoot a jovial silly one but honestly this reflects more how I fell so might as well be honest so many bags hooked up to me! hahahaha
9:30pm O:5 P:1 N:6 T:6
At least its predictable. Back to the crappy nighttime feeling. However, at the end of last hell week I had to do xmas eve and xmas stuff... this time I don't have to do anything so I plan to sleep.. take pills and drink water etc and nothing else. Just gonna shut down for a couple of days and try and recover. I may or may not post until my Bleo treatment monday depending on how I fell.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 4
Late start waking up this morning. Very tired. Getting premeds right now I will post an update later.
9:45am O:3 P:0 N:1 T:5
9:45am O:3 P:0 N:1 T:5
So having some serious fatigue issues today, I woke up (over an hour late) at about a 8 probably on the Tiredness scale. I slept "ok" I guess, not super great but decent. But I can't seem to really re-coup my losses tiredness wise. I am deep into Round 2's hell week so my level of tiredness could be normal I suppose. Anyway I am doing fine otherwise, my stomach is much better today and overall I feel ok kinda like I just had a really hard day yesterday working out or maybe pulled an all-nighter or something. Just started the platinum, so I will update later how everything goes. Still zero mouth sores which is awesome, we have done a great job staying ontop of that this time and its nice not to have to deal with that.
As for moving I felt really good last weekend and we got most of the house packed up, we have a few more things to do but we are in really good shape to move... and we get the keys Sunday (though we probably won't really start until the 21st when I got the SUPER UHAUL mover :-P )
1:05pm O:2 P:0 N:1 T:6
Done for the day, only one more day left for this round's hell week. I am crazy tired though, I feel like this week is taking a lot more out of me than the first week did. Though I remember more nausea and other issues the first week so I guess "just" being tired is better than all that. The chemo day was uneventful, more bags of poison, more fluids... then done. No reactions or any surprises today on that front. We did find a bug, we think, in some of my code at work so that's always fun especially trying to debug remotely from a chemo chair over a shared desktop session with CRAZY lag because the hospital wifi is crud. Hopefully I can get some rest and take a shot at fixing that later, or maybe someone on my AWESOME team back at the office will fix it before I even get a chance.. go guys go! hahahaha Here is your chair pic of the day (hat off) feeling ok just super tired.
4:45pm O:1 P:0 N:1 T:3
I wasn't able to sleep, but I did get to relax and take a break for a while. My mind was too focused on the work thing, and other stuff... plus "chemo tired" doesn't always let you sleep its a weird tired feeling. Anyway, I wanted to let you all know one of the AWESOME guys on my team Nhat found a great work around for my cruddy bug which will let the delivery go out! Great job Nhat, you are one of the reasons I love working on this project. Working with you the last 5 years has been great! And I can come up with cleaner solution once I can think better next week HA. Again, thanks so much for stepping up and helping me out! Oh and someone asked me earlier in the blog if the chemo affected me mentally as well as physically and I can say YES for certain now... just reading this simple compound IF statement that Nhat sent me earlier in our debug session made me think much harder than it should have... so yes be wary of your ability to do analytically thinking at least during strong hell week, I still "got it" it just took me longer than it should have.
9:15pm O:5 P:2 N:5 T:3
Its getting much worse, this is how I remember last Thursday/Friday being as the pre-meds wore off. My head hurts, my stomach feels horrible, and I feel like I have the flu or something. I am not overly tired but my knees are hurting (happens when I get tired or over work them its something from high school). I went ahead and took a promethazine, hopefully that will help turn the tide. I might up my Ativan dose as well because it has anti-nausea properties but I am wary of over medicating the issue.
1:05pm O:2 P:0 N:1 T:6
Done for the day, only one more day left for this round's hell week. I am crazy tired though, I feel like this week is taking a lot more out of me than the first week did. Though I remember more nausea and other issues the first week so I guess "just" being tired is better than all that. The chemo day was uneventful, more bags of poison, more fluids... then done. No reactions or any surprises today on that front. We did find a bug, we think, in some of my code at work so that's always fun especially trying to debug remotely from a chemo chair over a shared desktop session with CRAZY lag because the hospital wifi is crud. Hopefully I can get some rest and take a shot at fixing that later, or maybe someone on my AWESOME team back at the office will fix it before I even get a chance.. go guys go! hahahaha Here is your chair pic of the day (hat off) feeling ok just super tired.
4:45pm O:1 P:0 N:1 T:3
I wasn't able to sleep, but I did get to relax and take a break for a while. My mind was too focused on the work thing, and other stuff... plus "chemo tired" doesn't always let you sleep its a weird tired feeling. Anyway, I wanted to let you all know one of the AWESOME guys on my team Nhat found a great work around for my cruddy bug which will let the delivery go out! Great job Nhat, you are one of the reasons I love working on this project. Working with you the last 5 years has been great! And I can come up with cleaner solution once I can think better next week HA. Again, thanks so much for stepping up and helping me out! Oh and someone asked me earlier in the blog if the chemo affected me mentally as well as physically and I can say YES for certain now... just reading this simple compound IF statement that Nhat sent me earlier in our debug session made me think much harder than it should have... so yes be wary of your ability to do analytically thinking at least during strong hell week, I still "got it" it just took me longer than it should have.
9:15pm O:5 P:2 N:5 T:3
Its getting much worse, this is how I remember last Thursday/Friday being as the pre-meds wore off. My head hurts, my stomach feels horrible, and I feel like I have the flu or something. I am not overly tired but my knees are hurting (happens when I get tired or over work them its something from high school). I went ahead and took a promethazine, hopefully that will help turn the tide. I might up my Ativan dose as well because it has anti-nausea properties but I am wary of over medicating the issue.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 3
6:15am O:1 P:0 N:1 T:2
Actually feeling pretty good this morning. I never did end up taking a nap during the day yesterday, and while I felted pretty drained toward the end there.. I got MUCH better sleep at night, and I think a good 8 hours of solid sleep seemed to help me better than lots of little naps. Anyway, its hump day of this week and last Round this is where my symptoms really started to kick it up a notch (urgh I really dislike that show).
This is when my tongue sores started to set in, my nausea really started to ramp up, and my stomach basically refused to play nice with anything. However one thing I have noticed already that's better than last time is that metal taste isn't as bad... its certainly there especially WHILE I am getting the chemo but it doesn't seem to be lasting. Its different this time, I just can't taste much of anything. Not sure what is better.. metal taste or NOTHING taste :-P As for the comment/suggestion about a video blog, I had thought about that but even though I am devilishly handsome and witty (All be it more aerodynamic as of late).... not sure I have the skills needed to do a decent video without it looking like Blair witch project or something (which btw I can't watch more than like 3 minutes of without becoming crazy motion sick!!!!)I will leave the video work to the professionals at PTP NEW MEDIA :-P
Chemo starts at 8:30am so once we get settled etc I will give you guys an update around 9-10.. CYA!
TIP!!: Little tip for all you guys (and gals if you are cooking for your guys) I found it almost impulsive this morning that every time I handled RAW food and put it in to cook I went and washed my hands before returning to cook. No sense in risking mixing in a bit a raw "stuff" when your body has enough to deal with right now.
9:15am O:3 P:0 N:3-7 T:0
Something new has been happening. So normally "waves" of nausea have been from smells or something but this morning I am getting spikes up into the nearly vomit range for no reason. 1 was very close to the tipping point. They are doing the premeds now so hopefully that the squash that. I will update later with how it goes. Taste is still mostly "dead" which I guess is better than everything tasting like tinfoil B-)
10:15am O:1 P:1 N:2 T:1
Well not sure what happen with blogger there but it inserted all the HTML code for some reason. Jenn cleaned it up for me and emailed it back. Another new thing happen. I had some light 1-3 level pains in my left chest area. We stopped the platinum for a minute just in case but my blood pressure and heart rate were fine. It went away a so we started back up, no idea. I do have a thing when I get stressed with a very sharp pain right in the middle like in my sternum but this wasn't that. And no were near that strength. Oh well it went away and we are back off and running. BTW my nurse officially rocks. With all my issues with insurance one of my best meds is Emend but its like $900 a dose and they are being a pain about it. Well she got me a FREE dose pack voucher from their pharmacy. \(^-^)/
Awesome free expensive pills from my nurse, she rocks!
1:45pm O:1 P:0 N:2 T:4
Leaving a bit tired, with some mild nausea but that's better than I was in Round 1 so I take it as a victory.. so you get VICTORY POSE!
2:35pm O:1 P:0 N:1 T:2
Ran some errands, basic stuff and got my nice free $900 meds. When I got home I got caught up on some work emails and... well not going to get into it but it was a surprise to say the least!
6:20pm O:1 P:0 N:0 T:0
I feel a little "off" overall, but it might be from my work thing I dealt with. Honestly, I feel pretty dern good for being halfway through my Round 2 (which could be out of 3 or 4 depending on how things go). I got some new toys in from Amazon I am playing with and I am going to do some work for a few hours later today once I get settled. I did a few hours starting at 5am ish when I woke up so I figure if I can get in 4-6 hours at least on these HELL WEEK days I am doing good. I will post later if anything changes for the worst or any odd symptoms show up. My body seems to be handling this round better for some reason. Either my wife and my plans to "stay in front of it" this time and keep my TIPS going full force or maybe my body is just getting used to the onslaught :-P
9:35pm O:4 P:0 N:3 T:5
As is usually the case, the evenings are the worst. Longest away from the pre-meds, I have stayed up on all my medication but it doesn't seem to really keep things at bay. I am trying my best to stay up long enough to get a decent nights sleep until tomorrow's treatment. My nausea is up because I was quite hungry and pulled a rookie mistake and ate a huge serving... now my stomach is hating me and when you do that it drains you and makes you feel "flu-ish" all over.. hence the Overall rating. PORTION CONTROL, tip for the night. Goodnight all, I am going to hope for a great morning!
Actually feeling pretty good this morning. I never did end up taking a nap during the day yesterday, and while I felted pretty drained toward the end there.. I got MUCH better sleep at night, and I think a good 8 hours of solid sleep seemed to help me better than lots of little naps. Anyway, its hump day of this week and last Round this is where my symptoms really started to kick it up a notch (urgh I really dislike that show).
This is when my tongue sores started to set in, my nausea really started to ramp up, and my stomach basically refused to play nice with anything. However one thing I have noticed already that's better than last time is that metal taste isn't as bad... its certainly there especially WHILE I am getting the chemo but it doesn't seem to be lasting. Its different this time, I just can't taste much of anything. Not sure what is better.. metal taste or NOTHING taste :-P As for the comment/suggestion about a video blog, I had thought about that but even though I am devilishly handsome and witty (All be it more aerodynamic as of late).... not sure I have the skills needed to do a decent video without it looking like Blair witch project or something (which btw I can't watch more than like 3 minutes of without becoming crazy motion sick!!!!)I will leave the video work to the professionals at PTP NEW MEDIA :-P
Chemo starts at 8:30am so once we get settled etc I will give you guys an update around 9-10.. CYA!
TIP!!: Little tip for all you guys (and gals if you are cooking for your guys) I found it almost impulsive this morning that every time I handled RAW food and put it in to cook I went and washed my hands before returning to cook. No sense in risking mixing in a bit a raw "stuff" when your body has enough to deal with right now.
9:15am O:3 P:0 N:3-7 T:0
Something new has been happening. So normally "waves" of nausea have been from smells or something but this morning I am getting spikes up into the nearly vomit range for no reason. 1 was very close to the tipping point. They are doing the premeds now so hopefully that the squash that. I will update later with how it goes. Taste is still mostly "dead" which I guess is better than everything tasting like tinfoil B-)
10:15am O:1 P:1 N:2 T:1
Well not sure what happen with blogger there but it inserted all the HTML code for some reason. Jenn cleaned it up for me and emailed it back. Another new thing happen. I had some light 1-3 level pains in my left chest area. We stopped the platinum for a minute just in case but my blood pressure and heart rate were fine. It went away a so we started back up, no idea. I do have a thing when I get stressed with a very sharp pain right in the middle like in my sternum but this wasn't that. And no were near that strength. Oh well it went away and we are back off and running. BTW my nurse officially rocks. With all my issues with insurance one of my best meds is Emend but its like $900 a dose and they are being a pain about it. Well she got me a FREE dose pack voucher from their pharmacy. \(^-^)/
Awesome free expensive pills from my nurse, she rocks!
Leaving a bit tired, with some mild nausea but that's better than I was in Round 1 so I take it as a victory.. so you get VICTORY POSE!
2:35pm O:1 P:0 N:1 T:2
Ran some errands, basic stuff and got my nice free $900 meds. When I got home I got caught up on some work emails and... well not going to get into it but it was a surprise to say the least!
6:20pm O:1 P:0 N:0 T:0
I feel a little "off" overall, but it might be from my work thing I dealt with. Honestly, I feel pretty dern good for being halfway through my Round 2 (which could be out of 3 or 4 depending on how things go). I got some new toys in from Amazon I am playing with and I am going to do some work for a few hours later today once I get settled. I did a few hours starting at 5am ish when I woke up so I figure if I can get in 4-6 hours at least on these HELL WEEK days I am doing good. I will post later if anything changes for the worst or any odd symptoms show up. My body seems to be handling this round better for some reason. Either my wife and my plans to "stay in front of it" this time and keep my TIPS going full force or maybe my body is just getting used to the onslaught :-P
9:35pm O:4 P:0 N:3 T:5
As is usually the case, the evenings are the worst. Longest away from the pre-meds, I have stayed up on all my medication but it doesn't seem to really keep things at bay. I am trying my best to stay up long enough to get a decent nights sleep until tomorrow's treatment. My nausea is up because I was quite hungry and pulled a rookie mistake and ate a huge serving... now my stomach is hating me and when you do that it drains you and makes you feel "flu-ish" all over.. hence the Overall rating. PORTION CONTROL, tip for the night. Goodnight all, I am going to hope for a great morning!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
BEP Round 2 Day 2
1:51am O:3 P:0 N:4 T:0
So I have had some spikes in nausea up into the 7-8 range, I was talking with my wife about how bad one of the "waves" was and I said something like "It almost feels like if I just THOUGHT of something that smelled bad I would...." and nearly had to run to the bathroom! Crazy even in my hardest days of Round 1, I was never that sensitive to just thinking about something. I think its because I waited to eat until about 30 minutes before my Zofran dose. So that means it was at its weakest and it took about an hour or so to kick in so that's 1.5 hours of me being vulnerable to nausea, and I decide to eat... smart move. Anyway I said we should probably be more aware of my dosing schedule as it aligns with my eating schedule. I shouldn't try and eat a big meal at my weakest point, so to speak. Anyway I slept a decent amount last night, and then I slept through most of my session yesterday AND slept for like 4.5 hours mid day when my body just gave out so ... I am not really tired right now. I am just watching TV, and I did a little work (for you co-workers following this.. Unit Tests are boring so so freaking boring!!!) resisting the urge buy more things on Amazon... HAHAHAHA
My chemo isn't until 10am tomorrow, and its a big day I have my normal E&P rounds but I also have my bleo AND they are going to draw blood to check on my SUPER HUMAN white blood cell count :-P Depending on where that is, we are going to do another nuepogen shot or X however many the Dr wants. I think we, I am basing this on zero medical experience, probably won't do more than 1 or 2 considering 4 shot me up to 3x the normal white blood cell and neutophil count HAHAHA but hey he could keep it like that. It was nice not to have to wear the mask when we ran some errands... being bald is one thing but being bald AND having a medical mask on makes 100% of people stare at you. With next week being a "Bleo only" week, I am hoping my white blood cells stay up enough to go into work for a little while. I am getting a good amount of work done here but I have to say its very odd NOT to be at work. This is coming from some one that probably averages 55-60 hours a week most of the time and can go into the 70s or higher during peak times like before a build being due or something. Its just very odd to be basically quarantined to the house, my only trips out are to the hospital to get more chemicals pumped into me or the occasional errand where I have to be very careful about anyone around me that could be sick etc. Its actually funny, my wife and I were talking about how we have become very good observers of people's health. Are their eyes/cheeks/nose red, do they look "out of it" etc etc. This one lady sneezed and and I not kidding you I did an immediate 90 degree turn into another aisle before I could even really process WHY I did it. Anyway I am just rambling now cause its late and I am bored. I will update you guys/gals later today when I get my chemo etc.
10:30am O:1 P:0 N:1 T:0
So I am feeling much better this morning, my nausea is mostly gone still have that "bubbly" feeling in my stomach. I described it to the nurse last time as a light "food poising feeling" she didn't know what that meant HAHAHA guess you have to had food poisoning to understand. I talked to my doctor and we are going to TRY 12.5mg of IV benadryl this time instead of 25 (We started with 50 which immediately knocked me out). Hopefully that's enough to get the Etoposide from giving me a bad reaction and its low enough to keep it from making me sleep all dern day! Well I will post more/later as the day unfolds.
3:30pm O:2 P:0 N:3 T:5
All done, Bleo, Cisplatin, Etoposide... swimming around in my body whooping up on Cancer... and my hair what's left of it :-P. So the moral of the story today is CRAZY amounts of water to get it all flushed out of my system. Tongue is doing good, no sores yet. The 12.5mg of benadryl worked, I didn't have a reaction to the Etoposide so that's great we are going to leave it down at that level.. easier for me to function at those lower dosages. I might try and persuade them to try the full 523ml/hr speed instead of the reduced 400ml/hr speed tomorrow we will see. All in all I feel ok, very tired but I normally am when I get home from a chemo set and with it being 3 of them today its that much more for my body to deal with. I am having some nausea issues, but they are minor mostly just uneasy stomach and NOTHING sounds good... like I feel as if maybe I could eat but nothing sounds good and I am apprehensive of what some random thing would do to my already bubbly stomach. Here is your "chair pic" for the day, I am actually working on a stupid Unit Test and it just refuses to link for some reason AAaaaah I hate linker errors they are so hard to debug. For you work people reading.. take THAT for commitment 3x Chemo day and BAM still doing work :-P HEHEHEHEHHE
Oh and here is a pic of the Bleo I said i was gonna get you guys, I kept forgetting its a tiny bag:
And I will update later how the day went if I had more nausea or if I passed out for 4.5 hours again :-P cya!
9:45pm O:3 P:1 N:4 T:5
So I made it through the day without crashing, I have been very tired and I was worried that if I did go to sleep it would be for 3+ hours. I have had a few instances of pretty strong nausea but they were quick to swell and fade. I was able to eat lunch and dinner though but nothing has any taste aside from this one mustard which I put on things which shouldn't have mustard on it... so it would have a flavor HA. I am going to try and stay up until 10:30 at least so I can get a good nights sleep before day 3. I read through all my Round 1 week 1 posts and day 3 is when things started going down hill so I am hoping I don't repeat that. I am going to try and stay awake and continually drink water and little snacks, maybe some odwallas if I can't stomach anything else if my wife can go grab them or maybe on the way home. As for work, on of my co-workers pointed out something today. Going in during business hours might be a bad thing with all the germs etc around however I could go in later and do my sync up of my work and pull down the current baselines and run a few tests our licenses won't let me do from home so I am debating that approach. Seems like we are going to get the keys to our new place early this sunday so we might be able to take a little field trip and check out the new house! With everything going on right now with me honestly I don't remember much about the inside of the house I was distracted to say the least when we saw it. I am also considering taking a few days off for moving next week and the following week probably as vacation days since I don't have it in me to work extra hours to try and flex that time away. I will see you guys/gals tomorrow! (Btw google bugged me about adding AdSense to my site since I have gotten lots of hits so I figured why not.. if it gets crazy or in the way i will just remove it)
10:30am O:1 P:0 N:1 T:0
So I am feeling much better this morning, my nausea is mostly gone still have that "bubbly" feeling in my stomach. I described it to the nurse last time as a light "food poising feeling" she didn't know what that meant HAHAHA guess you have to had food poisoning to understand. I talked to my doctor and we are going to TRY 12.5mg of IV benadryl this time instead of 25 (We started with 50 which immediately knocked me out). Hopefully that's enough to get the Etoposide from giving me a bad reaction and its low enough to keep it from making me sleep all dern day! Well I will post more/later as the day unfolds.
3:30pm O:2 P:0 N:3 T:5
All done, Bleo, Cisplatin, Etoposide... swimming around in my body whooping up on Cancer... and my hair what's left of it :-P. So the moral of the story today is CRAZY amounts of water to get it all flushed out of my system. Tongue is doing good, no sores yet. The 12.5mg of benadryl worked, I didn't have a reaction to the Etoposide so that's great we are going to leave it down at that level.. easier for me to function at those lower dosages. I might try and persuade them to try the full 523ml/hr speed instead of the reduced 400ml/hr speed tomorrow we will see. All in all I feel ok, very tired but I normally am when I get home from a chemo set and with it being 3 of them today its that much more for my body to deal with. I am having some nausea issues, but they are minor mostly just uneasy stomach and NOTHING sounds good... like I feel as if maybe I could eat but nothing sounds good and I am apprehensive of what some random thing would do to my already bubbly stomach. Here is your "chair pic" for the day, I am actually working on a stupid Unit Test and it just refuses to link for some reason AAaaaah I hate linker errors they are so hard to debug. For you work people reading.. take THAT for commitment 3x Chemo day and BAM still doing work :-P HEHEHEHEHHE
Oh and here is a pic of the Bleo I said i was gonna get you guys, I kept forgetting its a tiny bag:
And I will update later how the day went if I had more nausea or if I passed out for 4.5 hours again :-P cya!
9:45pm O:3 P:1 N:4 T:5
So I made it through the day without crashing, I have been very tired and I was worried that if I did go to sleep it would be for 3+ hours. I have had a few instances of pretty strong nausea but they were quick to swell and fade. I was able to eat lunch and dinner though but nothing has any taste aside from this one mustard which I put on things which shouldn't have mustard on it... so it would have a flavor HA. I am going to try and stay up until 10:30 at least so I can get a good nights sleep before day 3. I read through all my Round 1 week 1 posts and day 3 is when things started going down hill so I am hoping I don't repeat that. I am going to try and stay awake and continually drink water and little snacks, maybe some odwallas if I can't stomach anything else if my wife can go grab them or maybe on the way home. As for work, on of my co-workers pointed out something today. Going in during business hours might be a bad thing with all the germs etc around however I could go in later and do my sync up of my work and pull down the current baselines and run a few tests our licenses won't let me do from home so I am debating that approach. Seems like we are going to get the keys to our new place early this sunday so we might be able to take a little field trip and check out the new house! With everything going on right now with me honestly I don't remember much about the inside of the house I was distracted to say the least when we saw it. I am also considering taking a few days off for moving next week and the following week probably as vacation days since I don't have it in me to work extra hours to try and flex that time away. I will see you guys/gals tomorrow! (Btw google bugged me about adding AdSense to my site since I have gotten lots of hits so I figured why not.. if it gets crazy or in the way i will just remove it)
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