This is the Kind of News we Like to Hear!
The night before my scans scanxiety set in full force. I was pretty stressed for my appointments. I was meeting with the new radiation oncologist that specializes in the brain (since my last one ran off to Duke). Introductions had been made and I wasn’t a new patient in case I need brain radiation at some point, I stil have some of the same concerns I did when I went to Seattle, but leptomeningeal mets trumps all things. It...
All Angle Attack
We are attacking my brain tumor and CSF cells from all angles – Xeloda and Topotecan both can reach inside my brain. I am close to finishing my final day of my first Xeloda cycle. So far, so good. Strangely enough, somehow everything I have been on for awhile has apparently had a lame impact on my tastebuds and Xeloda doesn’t have quite the same impact. Sweets are DELICIOUS some foods taste off, but fruits and sweet things...
Brain Chemo, Take 2
I feel like someone just stood in front of the screen and opened and closed the placeholder CUT! On that last little round of who knows what the heck that was. Now we are at take 2. Apparently Methotrexate intrathecally makes my meninges mad. Mad enough to flare up and cause crazy fevers that I have never seen before. The thermometers at the hospital were digital and I maxed them out… so, I was kind of hot… Pro tip –...
Branches Around my Heart
How to live hasn’t been something I have struggled a lot with. How to find time t0 do all of that living seemed to be the question. This week was the first time I felt like I truly fell down. I fell, and am nursing my hypothetical bruises. The bruise has branches up around my heart where they sit. Dark veins, telling me to give up, I don’t want to give up, but it murmers in one tired ear while my fingertips brush it away....
Chemo in my Braaaaiiiinnnsss
The week after my Kadcyla infusion is my exhausted and sick week, luckily I kept up on my anti-nausea medications and this week it was the first week that I didn’t throw up from it (hey, little things like not trying to send your intestines flailing into the toilet are what can bring this cancer patient joy). This week also left me fried and sleeping a lot, thus Mike decided we needed more help around the house doing some of the...
Oh My I Have an Ommaya!
I have had a week of being at the hospital pretty much every single day. Whew. I must loooove hospitals (and hospital food – actually my cancer hospital has two pretty decent restaurants in it, so you can get pretty much whatever you want and it actually tastes good). It started out with me meeting the really nice brain/spine guy (I need to find out what his official title is, maybe it is Oncologist and I just keep adding that...