The Latest Round

Once again, good morning to everyone. I so appreciate the kindness of everyone that checks this blog. Your comments and well wishes are so welcome. We so appreciate the visits, calls, food baskets, cards, singing on the porch and every act of kindness. We are truly blessed by good neighbors, friends and family. Thank you.

I just completed another round of chemo IV therapy on Wednesday and continue to take the oral drugs through next Tuesday. It seems to be going a little better this time. I prepared in advance for the digestive issues and so far, I seem to be doing better without all the upset stomach and bowel issues. I can't say for sure how it will go until I finish taking all the oral drugs. That remains to be seen.

I certainly appreciate being able to come home from the hospital after the IV infusions. The previous chemo was so much more bothersome and staying in the hospital for 5 days each time was not my choice for spending time. It is much better to be in my own bed with my sweetheart every night.

The routine now goes like this. We leave here early on Monday morning and arrive at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital Infusion Center a little after 8:00 a.m. After checking in, the nursing staff draws blood to run some labs to be sure that I can tolerate the planned chemotherapy. The easy part about that is that I still have a central line in my chest that was placed there in February. They take the blood out from there and put the chemo drugs in there too. No needles in the arm.

Fortunately, I have never had to have treatments put off yet, but the other day, a young lady next to me was sent home for a few days so that her platelets could recover. How disappointing that must have been. I can only imagine.

Once my blood has been cleared, the nurses (all of whom have been absolutely wonderful) have to pre-hydrate me with fluids and pre-medicate me with steroids and anti-nausea drugs. Following that, I get the first bag of chemo (Doxil) which takes an hour. That is followed by the second chemo drug (Cisplatin) that takes another hour to run in. Finally, both of those are followed by more hydration fluids which have to run in over another two hours. That is the plan on Mondays. Tuesday and Wednesday aren't so bad because I only get the second IV drug on those days so the treatment is an hour shorter on those days.

My poor sweetheart really gets tired of the sitting (so do I), but she is right there by my side for it all. What a trooper! At least I can lie back and snooze some. Do you like my "hair hat?" My good friend from Texas brought that to me. I get a lot of great comments on it.

On Monday, after the chemo was completed, we took a little walk over to my Urology Clinic at the University Hospital to visit the staff I work with there and to give them an update on the treatments, etc. The two hospitals (Huntsman and the Univ. of Utah Medical Center) are connected by tunnels and elevators, so it is a pleasant stroll to get there. It is always so good to see my colleagues there.

It was fun to discover that the powers that be finally got my name on the clinic sign. I had wondered when they were going to do that. I worked there for 7 months with out it. Now that I've been on sick leave for 8 months, there is my name! Imagine.

I was able to access the images of my last chest x-ray and chest CT scan. I'll post a couple of those images here for you to see.

Essentially, what you will see is one CT image with a big circle around a lesion in the front of my chest. This is a lesion that went from about 5 millimeters in size to about 19 mm in a matter of a few weeks while I was on the previous chemotherapy. The second CT image shows a new lesion in the left lung field that wasn't visible previously. Those two items alone were enough for the oncologist to switch treatment to this new program. The chest x-ray is much harder to see, but I believe that if you click on it, it will enlarge and you can see some faint circles or blotches throughout the lung fields. Well, these are the cancer lesions I am now fighting to get rid of. In the CT images, basically most everything that is white and round is a cancer lesion as well.

This is all so fascinating to me medically but challenging to us personally. I have to find some balance in all of this.

Jim