I'm laying in bed feeling a burst of happiness. Yes, happiness!!! Last week I was in the hospital gasping for breath.
I have had three different chemos since my initial diagnosis on June 1, 2009. The first, Gem/Tax I was allergic to and it crystallized my lungs. I only took 3 out of 4 rounds when they had to take me off it. After that horrible experience, I was bald and sick and found out my cancer had spread despite everything. I had cancer in my lung and in my liver. Stage IV. Pretty ominous, huh?
So then my hair started to grow back. I had a curly buzz cut. Then I went on a clinical trial at Mayo. They did the adriamyacin (the red devil - it is actually a red liquid that they manually "push" into your port (yes, I had had a port installed so I didn't have to have an IV.) Whoever invented the port should be a gazillionaire because it is the best invention a cancer patient could ever have!
My friends had a benefit for me in Papiliion, NE. My hair was falling out that night. By the next day most of it was gone. Itchy little hairs all over my pillows. I felt loved.
The clinical trial worked until Christmas 2010. I went up to Mayo for surgery in January 2011. I will call 2011 the year of the surgical intervention for me. The first MAJOR surgery took me a good two months to recover. I mean, literally. I couldn't walk up the stairs. I lost so much weight. I looked awful!! Then in July I had a walnut sized tumor removed from my lung. Then in September I had a couple spots nuked off my liver.
Meanwhile my hair started growing. I have been bald twice. Now my chemo curls are gone. I'm back to wavy for the first time in this 4 year battle.
Then I went on Temodar which is a brain tumor drug. It was super expensive but seemed to work and I had a pretty good quality of life. I was on it almost a year and a half.
A tumor grew on my intestine area right back where this all started. They call it the retroperitoneal. Anyway, they wanted to do another chemo before they tried surgical intervention again.
Well, if you've been around facebook the last couple weeks you know that was a DEBACLE! From day one of the Votrient I had side effects. If you look up the side effects on Votrient, you will see my picture next to it. Headaches. Blurred vision. Depression. Heaviness in my chest. Difficulty breathing. In 3 short weeks my heart went from 50% function to 28%. I felt like I might be dying. I really wondered if this is what it felt like to slide down into no return.
But thanks to the docs, I'm on the mend. I'm feeling happy today. I go to Europe in a couple weeks, I'll come home and set up surgery. I'm gonna eat healthy and kick this cancer in it's YOU KNOW WHAT!!!
