Ok. Again, I'm super bad at keeping up with this blog. To be fair, it's been a busy past few weeks.
I hope everyone had a ballin' 4th of July. I had my brother's family in town and it was good to hang out with all of them and see my nieces and such. Family is always your family, don't forget that. Hopefully yours is as supportive as mine is.
Since I'm in the radio biz, let's reset. It's been a few weeks since I was officially diagnosed, and I am almost two weeks out of my first chemotherapy treatment.
First off, since there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about what chemotherapy actually entails, I'll tell you what it's really like. First off, no, chemo is not a big machine they put you in, or anything like that.
Seriously, apparently a lot of people think this. Gave me a good chuckle.
Chemo is a series of drugs that are given one at a time over the course of several hours. Different kind of cancers may involve different drugs, but some of them are tried and true and used all the time. The infusion place where I went for my treatment was a really nice big room with many comfy recliners, TVs, toasty warm blankets, and really nice people. Not the worst place to get poisonous drugs put into your body.
My first course of chemo was longer than the rest will be, since they had to hit my system pretty hard and start fighting the bad cells. I was there from 9am until almost 5pm. The first hour was steroids and anti-nausea medicines. Two different anti-nausea medicines to be exact. After that the drugs were given in quick succession. My only immediate complaint is that it is a lot of liquid, and so you have to drag your IV from your seat to the bathroom multiple times. Note: there is no cool or smooth way to do this.
While getting treatment, I watched TV, played on the computer, took a nap, and just generally chilled until it was over. They do a lot to make sure you are comfortable and well-informed about what is going on as the treatment progresses.
I was a little tired afterward just from the experience, but did not feel sick or anything. In fact, I went to work at the Pelicans game right after I left treatment!
In the week after treatment, I awoke only twice feeling a bit queasy. I wouldn't even call it nauseous. But the doctors gave me Zofran (which was a brand-new trial drug at the time when my father had cancer over 20 years ago), which gets rid of nausea, so I took that and was fine 30 minutes or so. It's pretty amazing what these drugs have been able to do to help your body fight efficiently.
I had my port put in this week. It is a small surgical procedure to insert the medical plastic that will save my veins the trouble of having to carry all these drugs for the next five treatments. I feel like the Terminator or something; I've got this creepy foreign object under my skin.
I sort of feel bad that I don't feel worse, if that makes any sense. I see a lot of people on some of the support sites I am on and I feel like they look sicker than I feel. I know I will lose my hair, very very soon, and that may affect how I view my body as I get to the middle of this fight, but I know that the medicine I am being given has as its core objective that I be completely healed and thus feel better. My mother actually called the doctor today to inquire as to why I feel so much better. She saw my father go through much the same sort of treatment (though his was admittedly more intense) and wondered why I was not as sick.
The doctor told her, "The medicine is supposed to make him feel better. Hopefully he will keep feeling better and better!"
So there you have it. I am scared to lose my hair as vain as that sounds. I have a pretty weak head of hair to begin with, so what do I care? It's still just strange to imagine how I will feel when there is no outward doubt any longer that I am fighting this disease. How will people treat me? I'm curious and nervous to find out.
Thanks for reading, I hope that this finds you and yours well. I thank you for your prayers and notes of concern, they really do mean a lot, each and every one of them.
One chemo down, five to go. Let's do this dance.
God bless,
Matty P
