Final Journey

T-6 days

Only 6 days to go until I head into the hospital. I feeling pretty good right now in the nauseau is almost completely gone. Unfortunately I aquired a cold on Sunday so I’m sniffiling and taking a lot of sudafed. The doctors and nurses assure me the cold shouldn’t make a difference. Everything’s [...]

Chemo #3 Down

Next up stem cell transplant

Well, I’ve learned that during chemo treatments my energy to sit down by the keyboard gets pretty zapped. Since chemo cycle #2 I’ve done the following:

Chemo Cycle #3 PICC installed Blood Transfusion

Chemo Cycle #3 went a little better than #2 and it only took two days in the [...]

2 Cycles Down

Hair is gone, nasaeau is longer lasting

Well, my hair is long gone now, except for some spotty bristle patches that are falling out when I rub them. The hospital stay this time was extra long, I didn’t get out until 1:00pm on Friday because they took 36 hours to give me the 24 hour [...]

Feeling Good

3 days of down, but one big day of up, up, up.

OK, RICE sucks, much worse than CHOP.

Chemo Treatment #1

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, [...]

Chemo Underway

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 [...]

Second Opinion

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, [...]

Gibbscrew get together

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 [...]

Cancer Part Duex

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 of all that [...]

Finally, the Results

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.