I'm Home!

I'm completely overwhelmed with adjusting to being home after over 5 weeks in the hospital so here's a comic I poached from my other blog.

HINT: I won't be doing this anytime soon.

Lazy Hair Loss

Here's how I thought losing my hair would go (Think "The Godfather" - horse head in the bed):

Instead, my hair keeps leaving me cryptic notes on my pillow each morning:

Like a lazy roommate attempting to give thirty day's notice. Slacker.

Rest in Peace PICC I

One of the first procedures I had done before starting my treatment was to get a PICC line inserted into my vein. It's a tube that goes into you vein and into your chest. This protects your veins from the damaging chemo juices that they pump into you. Some people have chest ports, but mine's in my arm and I love it. Here's a diagram:

It is awesome. I get all my IV meds and all my labs drawn from those two little nodes. It makes life SO much easier. 

Unfortunately, blood clots can form and the PICC line needs to get out. My PICC line got a clot and had to be removed. I got a new one and everything is just peachy, but let's take a moment to remember PICC I, my trusty companion that lasted me through my first four weeks of chemo.

I like to think my PICC line can now enjoy the lighter things in life, like saving kitties from trees:

Or curling up around a nice steak:

Rest in Peace PICC I. You will be missed, but never forgotten.

Chemo - Week 4

Woo hoo!

FINALLY! No more midnight chemos! The IV push went swimmingly - or intravenously... - with flying colors! Once again, thanks to my lovely friend Brigida and her posh music sense, we rocked out to some sweet beats while the Pac Man and chemos did their job:

So, I'm not completely out of the first phase yet. On Jan 10th I have a couple big milestones: last lumbar puncture and last chemo treatment. Then the big BONE MARROW BIOPSY! Dum dum DUM! Then... we wait...

and wait...

And wait...

Things are looking good. Personally I don't feel like I have cancer (though I never did). Just exhausted and drained from all those chemo juices. Still getting used to the idea of having to always have someone on hand just in case I fall going to the bath room or brushing my teeth.

I'm holding onto this little quote: "And this, too, shall pass away." I read about it in a literature class, and of course I can't remember exactly where it came from (chemo brain), so here's Wiki's take on the quote's origin:

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!"


The quote was more for the sake of creating a sentence, but it means a lot to me now that living day by day I need to know that this too shall pass, and pass far, far away into the distant past.


Wish me luck, ya'll!

Lumbar Puncture

So, part of my treatment is getting chemo injected into my spinal fluid. The only way to do this is to have a lumbar puncture performed. If you have never had a lumbar puncture, then you are fortunate. It is very uncomfortable and pretty much the same thing as getting sap from a tree - except the sap is spinal fluid and the tree is my spine.

Uphill both ways

When you go through chemo, everything is like hiking at altitude. Now I get the expression, "uphill both ways":

Hello, 2012. And how are you today...

2012 is going to be an interesting year, to say the least. I look back on last year and my resolutions last year:

Not sure if I succeeded, but it was a nice try.

This year is already hard to predict. As I'm going into my last week of induction chemo, I really cannot plan further than the next 10 days. 

Just so we are all on the same page, "induction chemotherapy" involves a full 30 days of chemo cycles culminating in a bone marrow biopsy. Should that bone marrow biopsy yield NO signs of cancer, then I can move onto the next stage of my treatment - which involves around two years of maintenance chemo and all that jazz. 

I have 10 more days left of induction chemo. Jan 3rd is the day of my fourth and final round of chemo, then I have a week of sitting around, crossing my fingers, waiting for the cancer to go away. All my future plans hinge on the bone marrow biopsy results on Jan 10th. 

So, that being said, here are my new years resolutions for the next 10 days:

#1: Go into remission on Jan 10th!

#2: Walk 30 minutes a day.

#3: Keep posting on my blog.

#4: Laugh, even if I don't want to

#5: Smile, even if my jaw hurts too much

#6: Give the doctors a hard time

#7: Go home after the 10th, cancer-free!

Wish me luck, world!