Musings of a Software Development Manager

3 days of down, but one big day of up, up, up.
OK, RICE sucks, much worse than CHOP.

One down, three to go
Well all in all, the first treatment in the hospital with RICE wasn’t too bad. I felt a little woozy when they first set up the IVs, and the low grade naseau is back, but not too bad. One of the medications takes a full 24 hours to go in, and [...]

Only a few more treatments to go
This is going to be pretty short, becuase I forgot about the chemo side effects. I went into the ‘infusion center’ today and got shot up with:

Some prednisone (solamide?) like steriod
Saline
BP 16 (the E in RICE)
rituxin

On top of that I took a few pills, two tylenol and two benadrils. [...]

Well, Tuesday we went out to Stanford and got a second opinion from a world renowned hematologist. Essentially his reccomendations were:

Get a bone marrow biopsy before starting chemo
Use RICE over RCHOP, 4 cycles
Do the bone marrow transplant now rather than later

Actually he explained that it was a stem cell transplant really, so they never actually [...]

Lots of fun
Yesterday was a pretty great day. I got up and had brunch with Jon and Dopey who went on a banzai trip all the way from Vegas to spend the day. Joe, Ghen, Scum, Ben, and Tom showed up a little later. We hung out for the day doing mostly geeky things like [...]

Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma
Well, we learned the biopsy results today. As it turns out, good news indeed, it’s the same as last time, Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. It happens to be the most common type like 30-40% of all lymphomas. It also happens to be curable. And on top [...]

I should know pretty much what I’m facing in 45 minutes
I’m leaving for the oncologist’s office in a few minutes now. Soon I’ll know pretty much exactly what I’m up against. Plenty of questions.