Like I said below, it was official this morning that it was hodgkin’s again. The treatment is a new chemo treatment for two or three cycles (one treatment is a cycle), they don’t know exactly until they start and also depends on how quick they can get a response from my insurance about the stem cell infusion. The treatment is three days in a row for 5 hours each but is out patient, so I’ll be going home after it each day. It’s three chemo drugs that will be going into my port and one oral drug that does some kind of kidney support because the chemo is rough on them. The fourth day I go in for some shot that increases my white blood cells, think that’s it on the fourth day. The chemo treatments are three weeks apart. Three to five weeks after the last chemo treatment I’ll be inpatient for some kind of other chemo treatment and then right after (or during or something) they’ll do the stem cell infusion and then I’ll be in the hospital for at least a week to recover. I can’t remember what he said, it was at least a week but he may have said a week or 2 or may have said 2 or 3 weeks.
Having hodgkin’s didn’t hit me today, that already happened the last appointment with Dr. Dragon after the recent PET scan. My anticipation for how much the treatment is going blow is what’s hitting me some… I mean, whatever, I’ll get through it and we’ll see what happens, but ya, it’s going to suck. Almost forgot to say that it was scheduled to start Monday (so it will be this coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday).
Oh, and I don’t know if I said I had an MRI, can’t remember and don’t feel like looking. So ya, I had an MRI after the PET scan and I have a bone lesion between the femur and the ball that goes into the hip joint thing. That’s something that hodgkin’s can make happen apparently, bone lesions I mean. That’s why my hip hurts apparently, and having a bone lesion makes it easy to fracture apparently. So I’m probably going to get some crutches to use while it’s healing, which should start after the first chemo but could take a number of weeks to heal he said.
Edit: Forgot they were going to do radiation to the areas that present or however he said, so my pelvic/hip area basically. I think it’s going to be just before the stem cell infusion but I can’t really remember. I don’t know, as long as I get the gist of what’s going on and know where to be and the expected effects that’s fine. I mean, as long as the doctor knows what’s up, that’s enough, I don’t need to know the ins and outs of everything (and don’t really care about knowing every little detail).
added an edit to the bottom that I forgot to mention before.
It sounds like they are getting extremely serious with this round. Isn’t radiation and stem cells new to your treatment?
ya, i guess technically it’s all new. the chemo drugs are three different ones administered three days in a row which is new. and ya, haven’t previously done radiation or done stem cell infusion before.
and ya this is more intensive. he said there wasn’t any way to tell this might happan. that there is that other treatment that is more aggresive but i didn’t present with the symptoms that would make it seem wsrranted and even with that can’t know if it would have worked better and it does have more potential fot side effects (one being leukemia).
after the appointment, Dr. Dragon shook my hand and got a look on his face like, ‘wait, screw that’ and put his arms out and we hugged.
I would think that the stem cells (being functionally regenerative) would be infused after the treatments; because the chemotherapy treatments are going to do a lot of damage to surrounding, healthy tissues. (probably a lot more than last time) You’re probably really going to have to restrict certain foods from your diet for some time to come.
Not thinking of the name of the illness at the moment, but there’s an illness where the body’s defenses begin to attack healthy tissues (and not just mutated/infected/cancerous tissues). I’m curious. Is cancer partially the inverse of that disorder/disease or does the body’s defenses still at least attempt to eliminate mutated/damaged/cancerous cells ?
Unfortunately the triple-whammy with Hodgkins is the disease and treatments both wipe out the immune system; the very system that if still applicable, might help fight the mutated cells. Wonder how it might be possible to “paint” specifically the cancer cells as a high-priority target for the body’s immune system.
I’m not sure it’s the immune system that makes it go away. I think basically, chemo is a poison that kills cancer faster than it kills you. Don’t think my immune system is doing the killing of the cancer. not really sure though.
and you’re thinking of auto-immune disease.
the pharmacy at the hospital called me and they’re going to fill the prescription for the kidney support medication and my co-pay is $100, the actual price of the medication she said was $1800… glad I’m not trying to pay that out of pocket, shit.
Keep telling you to opt for those products that aren’t incased in platinum.
but with pills, platinum coating helps it go down so easy!