www.cancermonster.net

It’s me.

I’m doing pretty good this second day of Chemo Part III.  The only real problem is that they are having a hard time finding a viable vein in my arms or hands on either side.  I have the double port in my chest for the Chemo, but the Thiamine needs it’s own entrance to my system and that is getting trickier and trickier.   My veins have always been small and deep and they have a tendency to move when you poke at them.  Now that the Chemo is running through them, it seems they are getting mad and behaving worse than usual.  I have been poked and prodded more times than one could imagine.  My late night nurse was the expert on the floor.  She poked me.  The veins ran from her.  At 3:00am, she called in a nurse from ICU who is the IV go-to on her floor.  She poked me.  The veins ran from her too.  At 4:30am the nursing supervisor for the entire hospital showed up.  The IV that we had been using totally stopped working by then.  It was delivering my Thiamine.  No Thiamine.  Rut Roe Raggy.   But the TopDog was able to find a small vein in my right hand that worked.  She got it in one!  It hurt like a dickens, but I was happy to have it– even though I was trying to not need my right hand to be carrying the IV.  I do every thing with my right hand… They are telling me that I will need some special line -either a midline or a PIC line, next trip in here. . .  Whatever!  If it means less poking I’ll take it.

Hold that thought.  My nurse just informed me that the pharmacist came up with a way to combine the two bags of chemo in one side of my double port and run the Thiamine and fluids in the other side.  Then I don’t need this one on my hand.  Whoo Hoo!!

“What if we take this out of my hand and the combining of the two chemoes  doesn’t work for me?  Then we have to dig this vein back out again . . .”
He said he was thinking the same thing.
“What if we just cap this one off there and leave the stub in for a while. . . Just to make sure the new way works. . . As much as I would love to have the whole thing gone, I would really hate to have to put the IV back in.”
“Good Idea.”

Backing up a few hours . . . My Dr W was the guy on rounds this morning.  When he came in he was checking out my artwork.

“What is this?”  asked Dr W.
“Therapy”  Answered Dan.
“Silk Painting Dyes” I added.
“And this?  Is it glue of some kind?  You have poison here?”
“It’s called ‘resist.“ It keeps the dye from flowing past and the only poison in this room is what your pumping through my veins.”
“It’s called Therapy.”
“It’s still poison.”

That got me a Dr.W smile.  I like those.   Then he turned to my Chemo IV Cart.

“What’s all this?”  he asked while looking over all the stuff I had hanging on my cart that wasn’t poison.
“Hey, If I have to walk around pulling along all this nasty chemo hanging there, I want to see something pretty and fun before I see that yuck.  It’s my way of thumbing my nose at the CancerMonster!”

I got another smile for that.

Nah Nah, Na, Nah Nah!
Notice the hat? It says “No Hair Day!”   It was a gift from Anita!  I love it.

My lunch is here.  Only cold stuff so as not to bring that cooked in smell in the room.  It helps my nausea level to keep the smells around here to a minimum.  A sandwich and a salad. Whatever.

I will try to write you again before I am done with this cycle.  So far so good.  It’s nice to spend some time alone with Dan.  He will be going home in the morning and Anita will take his place baby sitting me for the second half of my stay.  My mom and Pam played tag with the kids.  Mom was there bright and early at 7:30am yesterday morning to take care of the three hooligans and Aunt Pam came in the evening to take over and take them to the movies!   Then she spent the night and will again tonight so the kids can stay in there own house.  School starts back tomorrow, too.  Aunt Pammy will drop them off in the morning.  All covered.  What a family I have. Their love and support is part of the story.  Part of the testimony.  Part of the medication that I need to get better.

I am Blessed to overflowing.

Gonna keep this short and sweet . . .

Dan and I sat in the exam room waiting for the Doctor to come in. We were confident in what we knew he would say. Not an ounce of doubt in our thoughts. It was going to be good news. We knew it, because we have faith in the promise of our God. And confident because I felt good! We sat waiting.

The Doctor walked in and I swear he was floating an inch off the floor. “You want to get more treatments?”

Dan and I looked at Dr W and then we looked at each other . . . And back at the Doctor who was beaming with a smile from ear to ear.

“Well? You want more treatments?”
“Well, ah . . . What is it? You saw the scans already?”
“Yuup!” big smile . . .

The CT Chest Scan was only done less than an hour before. The last time I had a new scan to look at was in November and Dr W pulled up the scan in the exam room in front of us that time. This time, he pulled up the scan in the back staff only area while we waited in the exam room. I wonder what he thought he was going to see?

“Let’s save time . . . come with me!” Dr W led us down the hall and through a staff-only door and around the corner to a bank of computer screens where I was hanging out, inside out again. “I have lined both today’s scan and November’s scan up so that they will scroll together. Watch as I move through your lungs. See that one on the old scan? It’s not there on the new one. And that large one on the right — half the size on the left. . . See this area on the right? It is fluid and swelling along the lining of the lung. It’s not there on the left. No fluid. No swelling. . . This spot is smaller . .. This spot is gone. . .”

It went on and on like that. The small spots on the two month old scan were missing on today’s picture and the large spots were ALL SMALLER! Most by 50-75%!!! Not one spot was unchanged or larger!

Praise GOD!

It’s working. It’s all working! Dr W was so excited and so were Dan and I! I think that Dr W wanted to jump up and down, he really did! But he didn’t. But I could see in his eyes that he wanted to! Sarcomas are so rare and so . . . so hard to kill without cutting them out, that to see this kind of progress after two cycles . . . Dr W was excited. To him, maybe it is a write up with his name on it, I don’t know. And I don’t care. To Dan and I it was confirmation of what we already knew. My God is bigger than Sarcomas. We already knew that the cancer was receding.

I start the third cycle of Chemo on Saturday. This time we will know even more what to do and what not to do. We know how to get through it. I will go a little crazy a few more times. Whatever it takes, right?

Back in Oregon, when I was in OHSU’s hospital getting the original tumor removed from my tush, my sister, Anita cornered my surgeon alone in the hallway and asked him about what to expect when her baby sister started chemo.

“On this chemo, she won’t be a mother. She won’t be a wife. She will barely be a human.”

My dear Dr House didn’t know me as well as I thought he did. And maybe he didn’t know what they can do at H. Lee Moffitt. And obviously, he didn’t know that My GOD is in charge of my life.

I have news for the MONSTER: I may have IT, but IT doesn’t have ME!