Ending As We Started

One year ago on this very day I had my first treatment of ABVD chemotherapy. Hard to believe it's been a year. Six months of ABVD chemotherapy, two months of ESHAP chemotherapy, one course of high-dose Melphalan, one stem cell transplant. I think I went one month - July - without any cancer-related things being done to me, but it was hard to enjoy because I was pretty sure my cancer wasn't dead and was making a comeback.

Today my treatment plan for the second transplant was signed off. I will be admitted to the hospital at 8 AM Tuesday to start seven days of high-dose chemotherapy. On the eighth day they'll put the poison away and give me the stem cell infusion, which I know from previous experience is no picnic either.

Monday I have to start taking high-dose anti-seizure medication. Apparently the chemo drug they will give me on the first three days can cause seizures. The chemo drug is also either derived from or mixed with alcohol; the doctor said "you may feel a little drunk throughout." Wow. Three days of drunken seizures - what part of that wouldn't appeal to the average wino? That ought to give my visitors the creeps, me alternating between drunken giggling and seizures, probably with some desperate vomiting thrown in from time to time.

After it's all over (the chemo and the stem cell transplant) they'll then send me back to Dr. Adoo, my first oncologist, for radiation therapy.

I guess the point is that I'll start 2010 the way I started 2009, equipped with cancer and doing chemo. But this much is true: my cancer today is very much reduced compared to last year. Last year I had nodes in my neck, shoulders, internal organs and elsewhere, and couldn't bend in certain directions without experiencing agonizing pain in my left kidney and right lung. Today I can't find any nodes at all. My doctor thinks she can feel one in my groin (sounds like the premise for a bad pornographic novel) but I tend to disagree. It doesn't feel like a node to me, but then again, I'm not board-certified either. But even if it IS a node, it's a small one, and it's only one, which is a huge improvement over last year. And my doctor as much as said that they never expected the high-dose Melphalan to kill the cancer outright, but merely to "de-bulk" it so the upcoming seven days of chemo can kill it.

So. I have the equivalent of a three-day weekend left to me before I go into the hospital and start the real chemotherapy. It's going to be unpleasant, but the only way out of this mess is to keep moving forward. Besides, how bad can it be? I've suffered every indignity imaginable from past chemo treatments (I've been wearing Depends since my second round of ESHAP, for example) and I can't imagine that this chemo will bring any new outrage. And I can't imagine the physical and mental suffering could be any worse than ESHAP. So it's just one more treatment to get through. I'll miss being home. I'll miss my wife and my little dog and the orange cat. I'll miss the Internet and the ability to send and receive email. But I'll survive.