I Owe at Least One Chemo Post

I'm just getting sick of talking about chemo! The women on my message board are starting to make up words like chemocentric and chemolicious, and I occasionally find myself doing the same thing. But of course, the point to the blog is that I can write down what I'm going through and not have to repeat the information. If I don't write it, I have to talk about it ... again and again and again. That's starting to happen.

So, treatment #3 side effects are almost past. My mouth is starting to heal, which means I can taste food just a bit now, and my tongue isn't instantly turning even ice cream to lava. I'm writing this from a subbing assignment, my third day this week at the same school (and I'm having such a blast!). My head, my stomach, etc. Everything is fine. On Monday night MJ and I went for a fast-paced walk for 45 minutes, and I felt good when I returned.

Last week was so crazy. I had a day on Thursday that's like the kind of day people post about on eBay just before they make $10,000 selling an old baseball or an ugly, unlucky wedding gown. Grass, mud, toys, a trip to the ER (for Civia's husband, he's okay), the rabbi showing up, a houseful of extra kids, a freezing cold bath for Jonah, PMS (not mine), all while I was too sick to emerge from the bedroom. Gotta laugh in retrospect, but hopefully there won't be any repeats of such insanity! That's like the woman on my board who was at her child's softball game and managed to get conked on the head with the ball. Of all people, the ball had to land on the cancer patient's head! She got her "second ambulance ride" for that one, and after all that we had to laugh. Because she's okay, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be funny, obviously.

Today's lesson is titled What I've Learned about Chemo, Which Isn't Much. The cocktail I'm taking is a mix of taxotere and cytoxan (TC). Taxotere is pretty new, it's only been around for a few years. The side effects are weird and unreliable, which is why I almost never know what to expect. The hair loss is about the only definite, and even with that, I still have about 15% of bitty hair covering. Many people with "early stage" breast cancer (and I am considered to be early stage, thank goodness) take this combination. However, severe allergic reactions seem to prevent about 20% of women from being able to take it. We who can tolerate get 4 to 6 doses of it, one every three weeks. That's because it takes three weeks for the chemo to leave the system. As soon as it's out, put in more.

The other commonly used chemo drug combo for breast cancer patients is adriamycin and cytoxan (AC). This is tougher to handle than taxotere, or at least more nauseating. It also can cause or magnify heart trouble. Some women need both adriamycin and taxotere before they finish their regimens, usually four AC and four TC. Before I met with Dr. Fox, Dr. Czerniecki led me to believe that's how it would go for me. Women who have the AC first tend to be slightly relieved when they get to the TC. So I'm lucky to just have to take TC!

There are other chemo meds for breast cancer, including a brand new one (Avastin) which is still in the trial stages, and then other kinds of chemo used for other cancers. I just found out about a clinical trial for a med that's supposed to have tremendous success in keeping cancer from recurring in the bones, so I plan to ask about that next time I see Dr. Fox. Otherwise, I go for chemo on Monday, May 11 (last treatment) and then so on and so on.

Finally, I have to mention last Sunday night. My first boss out of college was a magazine editor with a strong penchant for superlatives. An endlessly energetic 30-year-old guy. I've kept in touch with him all these years, and now he's a pretty energetic 51-year-old guy who's become a superlative nutritionist. When I told him about my diagnosis, he jumped right into gear. He sent me the most restrictive diet I could possibly imagine, and told me if I didn't follow it I would die. Because I was still pretty much a child when I started working for him, I spent the next few weeks whining at him, how could he make me do that. I tried to get out of the two-hour Whole Foods tour he insisted I take on Sunday night, but the beautiful weather was not an adequate excuse for him, and my kvetching did nothing to dissuade him. So I went, and learned a lot! I promised I would add his foods to my diet, and along the way we made some compromises, and it turned out well. It's definitely worth it to look into better nutrition after all this, even if you think you're eating well enough already. Of course, I might not read the paper he gave me on the dangers of sugar. There's no way I'm entirely giving up chocolate chip cookies!

Well, that's enough. Or at the very least, I'm out of prep and lunch time.