Night sweats are back

It depressed me quite a bit to wake up last night with a soaked t-shirt. I had gotten my hopes up that round 7 was going to be the one that did them in.  To be honest, it makes me nervous - I don't care what the doctor says. 
But as somebody pointed out (I think it was Dad) there is a reason why I am getting at least 12 rounds of chemo. After 5 rounds the PET scan didn't show any cancer cells, but they expect there are stragglers. The last 7 rounds must be designed to get the stragglers.
Kind of freaky, though, that the night sweats came back as soon as the chemo is theoretically be out of my system. I wonder if that is any indication of how quickly the cells "reproduce".

UPDATE: I was just chatting with my Dad. Although the night sweats are disconcerting, I do need to remember that they are nothing like pre-chemo night sweats. Back in November I was sleeping with a stack of clean sheets, towels, t-shirts, and underwear next to my bed. I'd have to change everything at least 2, usually 3 times a night. So at the very least, things are much, much better. And on the thinking positive side, this night sweating I am experiencing could even be unrelated to cancer (often when we check on Emily before going to bed, she has broken out in a sweat and not awoken to kick off the comforter).

Chemo 7.6

In principle I ought to refuse to write a x.6 chemo post, because there shouldn't be 6 days of chemo side effects. However, for the record (and future reference) I'll say that I feel like I have a lot more energy today. I'm at the office, reading through a stack of boring mail, and feeling happy to be out.  The coffee pot I left here last week is thick with mold - delicious!

UPDATE: Thanks Mom! You're right, it is 7.6 (not 6.6) woohoo! I feel like I just skipped a whole round :-)

A little ghost

Last week when Luke heard that Anna had the stomach bug, and looked like "a little ghost in pink pajamas", he sent over this illustration for Anna to color. It cheered Anna up quite a bit. I love how she wrote the number 5 next to the sick ghost with the bucket. That's "5" as in, "I threw up 5 times!". I told you she was proud :-)

More evidence that the universe is unjust

The hair on my head is falling out while the hair on my ears is growing like dandelions. Seriously, with the right lighting it looks like I've got wings on the side of my head. Man!

The problem with Hillary is...

...she's just so damn easy to make fun of. I'm not saying John Stewart isn't biased toward Obama, but you do get the feeling that the pen flows a lot easier when they sit down to write the jokes about Hillary.

A motivational liar

Here is an article about a teacher who kept his students on their toes by deliberately telling a lie each class. Sounds like fun. I think I'll try that technique out on the girls :-)

Chemo 7.5

I was saying to Mathilde the other day that I have a feeling this round of chemo has been a pretty effective one. The interesting thing about these treatments is that I seem to react a bit differently to each one. The first treatment seemed to be very effective, and knocked me on my ass for a week. The second treatment was a lot easier, and I remember telling the doctor that I felt like I hadn't even had chemo (that was the one where I stopped at McDonalds on the way home from the treatment and ate a quarter pounder. Just writing that sentence made sick) Treatment 6 had its share of side-effects, but the night sweats never really went away (nor did they with number treatment 2).
Treatment 7 seems to really be doing what it is supposed to, though. On Sunday I had the vague feeling that a lot of cells were being killed. I have what I call narcolepsy pretty badly (where I sleep for 12 hours, wake up thinking I couldn't possibly sleep anymore, and the next thing I know it is 3 hours later). This morning I woke up with the girls to help get them out the door and found that my knees really ache and that I was out of breath just buttering a piece of toast. Not sure what causes the knees to ache (could be lack of exercise), but the shortness of breath is probably caused by a low red blood count (which would also explain the tiredness). I don't recall having shortness of breath from chemo before, but I take it as a good sign. Even though I think chemo sucks, the truth is I am the type of person who likes the cough syrup to taste bad.

My favorite Obamacan just sent this article

Obama and the Power of Words

Chemo 7.4

Feeling much better today (sorry for getting all whiney yesterday).  I feel like I am beginning to get my energy back, and hey, I haven't had any night sweats since the last chemo. That doesn't mean they won't come back in a few days, but it is nice that they are gone for the time being. 

Chemo 7.3

Slept most of the day. I was just getting up when I heard Emily and Anna knocking on the door. They just arrived home from school (happy and smiling) and now Emily is singing to herself and dancing around the kitchen while she makes a snack for herself and Anna. I don't know when Emily turned into such a big kid. She is very cool.

I'm getting bored with the whole chemo thing - mild nausea, distracting headache, exhaustion, weird taste in mouth, bleeding gums, tingling fingers and toes, that weird poisoned feeling. None of it is like somebody is sticking a knife in your side, but cumulatively you just get kind of sick of it. Oh well...a few more days and I'll be feeling great. And hey, nobody else in the family has started puking yet, so it could have been a lot worse!

Chemo 7.2

I should have enjoyed the energy I had yesterday more than I did, because it is gone today. Slept till 10. Took a nap around noon. Except for watching 2 episodes of The Office with Mathilde, I guess I have been sleeping most of the day. Feeling kind of nauseous, but still managing to eat. The weird smell has left my nose but I think it has turned itself into a weird taste in my mouth. I have a headache and feel pretty irritable.

Cheap safe cancer drug

I remember reading about this some time ago. The cynics say the reason there isn't more interest in the drug is because it isn't patentable and therefore not profitable. I don't believe that one, but I do wonder why we haven't heard more about it. Article here.

Chemo 7.1

Slept fine last night. No night sweats, which was nice. The night sweats have been very mild lately, but annoying in their persistence. The doctor said they do not know why there are night sweats with Hodgkins, but that it isn't uncommon for them to persist longer than you would expect after treatment has begun. He said that a theory is it has to do with the bodies hormonal reaction to the cancer. That makes sense to me.
Today, the nausea is in check and I feel pretty good- not as weird as I did yesterday. There is a strange smell in my nose. Drank coffee this morning, which I don't think I normally feel like drinking the day after chemo.

Stretch Armstrong

Emily discovers a little know side-effect of chemotherapy

Chemo 7.0

So I'm either one round past the halfway point, or one round away from (I'll find out if it is 12 or 16 rounds in the beginning of April).

Getting Chemo today went fine, but things were pretty crowded at the hospital. The stomach bug that Anna had has swept through the inpatient ward at the hospital. I guess basically every patient up there has it coming out both ends. I feel really bad for them - the whole reason they are inpatients is because they are too sick or weak to be home and then to be hit with this. Ugh.

I always get my chemo in the outpatient ward on the 4th floor, but apparently a lot of other out-patients get chemo on the 21st floor (inpatient ward). Anyway, due to the stomach bug they weren't letting anybody up there. So the ward on the 4th floor looked a bit like grand central - except everybody had IVs dripping chemicals. 

So, I didn't get my usual spot in the recliner in the corner cubicle, but instead I got a bed in the hallway. I'm not much for lying in beds in public (and I'm about 5 inches too long for the beds). But actually it wasn't that bad - there is more to look at out in the hallway (I have to admit I have gotten sick of staring at the same Chagall poster for 3 or 4 hours every second week).  I had to wait about an hour before my 4 bags of cocktails were mixed, but after that, everything went fine. (Waiting the 10 minutes after I get the anti-nausea before starting the chemo seems to do the trick). 

Because I got a late start, Mathilde had to leave to get the kids (I took a nap in the pint sized bed in the hall). They arrived back at the hospital by the time I was done. We were home around 4 pm and by then I was feeling tired and weird, so I went upstairs to lie down. I didn't take a sleeping pill (as a test) and slept soundly until 6:30.  Had a nice dinner (thank you Rod!) and have spent the evening  watching TV on the couch with my 3 lovely ladies. Now I feel weird and feel like I am ready for bed soon.

Oh yeah, I guess I have chemo-brain too, because I've had to re-read this post about 4 times to find all of the important words I left out.

UPDATE: 5 times

On my way to round 7

The bug caught up to us

It seems for 2 months we have been hearing about this stomach bug that is going around. We hoped our religious hand-washing had allowed us to slip past the bug unnoticed, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. 

Poor little Anna woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a stomach ache, and has thrown up 3 times since then. The first time wasn't pretty, and I am now even more deeply indebted to Mathilde who cleaned it all up without even the slightest complaint.  Anna seems semi-okay now (at 8 in the morning) but she looks like a little ghost in pink pajamas, watching cartoons and hugging her puke bucket.

I wonder what a stomach flu will be like when doped up on anti-nausea drugs? 

UPDATE:  Banana has now thrown up 5 times. She seems quite proud of herself :-)

Vacation ends tomorrow

Chemo 7.0 starts tomorrow morning. I go in this afternoon for blood tests and to get the stitches removed that secure my iPod cable.  I assume my blood count will be fine since the injections Mathilde gave me before round 6 boosted it back up to normal (I think it'll take a few rounds of chemo before it gets back down to the really low numbers). I have my customary list of questions for the doctor (to keep him on his toes) and I'll post back here if I find out anything interesting. 

Clarification

The post below this one, titled "Idaho ski trip", has caused some confusion. It helps if you look at it as semi-fictionalized storytelling. Kind of like when I retell stories of my childhood to Emily and Anna - I am always the hero saving Rod's ass from whatever dangerous situation he has stumbled upon. It may not be true, but I think the girls find it much more enjoyable that way.

I can see how some people might be confused though. For example, in the post below I write, "We got snowed in...". This is semi-fiction because, well, I wasn't really there (but I did look at the pictures).

 

When I don't have a slew of fascinating chemo side-effects to blog about I sometimes think it's nice to exercise my fingers with a bit of semi-fiction.  At the moment, I am working on a post about what an inspiring time I had at the Obama rally in Wisconsin (as you can see from the picture below).  I was a bit reluctant to be in public with my new hairdo, but I was amazed how many people just slapped me on the back and said, "Dude, nice Obama-do!"

Idaho ski trip

It's taken a while, but I have finally gotten around to sorting and posting some of the pics from our ski trip.

We got snowed in the first night, so rather than making a hazardous trek through five feet of fresh snow, 2 hours before sunset, we decided to hang out and do Wild Turkey shots with some of the locals. It took only about two shots before the ladies were screaming their lungs out at karaoke. As you can see, Brian and I were not amused.



I don't know what it is about Rod that makes some men feel so befuddled about their own sexuality, but this poor guy in blue was 3 sheets to the wind and couldn't figure out if he wanted to slug Rod or hug him. Luckily Brian was there to manage the situation (you can almost hear Brian whispering, "I got your back, bro. I got your back").

There is a wonderful picture of Scott - one of those rare moments you seldom capture on film. This is a family friendly place though, so I am in doubt about whether to post it or not. Put it this way, if the guy in blue had seen the picture, he would have been buying Scott drinks all night instead of Rod.

Work looks like play for some people

I always get a kick out of watching Luke work. He reminds me of Emily and Anna when they are coloring - just sitting there happy as little clams humming to themselves and giggling at the the things they draw.
 
It's always a fun moment for me when Luke starts sending the graphics my way (so I can implement them into whatever game we happen to be making).  At the moment we are working on a game called "War of the Words" that will be sold along with a new Danish/English Dictionary for kids. Luke just sent over this shot of the cover graphics.  



If I know Luke, he was making little sound effects the whole time he designed the cover, and it probably didn't take him more than 20 minutes. Anyway, I am getting excited about the game - it looks like it's going to be fun.

Happy land

Here is the 60 Minutes piece on Denmark, the happiest country in the world.  I like the professor in the beginning who says Danes are happy because they have such a glum outlook on life, so when things actually turn out ok they're thrilled. I think the 4 students in the end are probably closer to the truth - Danes measure happiness a bit differently.  Free time is really important to them, so with a guaranteed 6 weeks vacation people ought to be happy. But it's true, Danes don't smile much - Mathilde is campaigning hard to change that though, saying hi and smiling at people even when they pretend not to see her.

 

The cancer card isn't always without strings

Some parents of a boy in Emily's class sent me a nice bottle of wine. It was thoughtful of them, particularly since we don't know them that well. I pulled the cancer card and asked Mathilde to write a thank you email (I figured she would drink the wine too, and my written Danish isn't error free to say the least). Anyway, Mathilde accepted the pulling of the card, and wrote something like this (abbreviated version).

Dear Peter and Tina,

Thanks for the wine.

Best, Kevin

Last night I got this email.

Dear Kevin,

You are welcome. Get well.

Best,  Peter and Carol

Mathilde laughed a lot harder than I did.

Germs vs. Cancer

This article is about an interesting theory in cancer research. The idea is that infections force the body into combat-mode, thus making the immune system much more capable at destroying cancer cells. One example they site is that people who have had severe acne, caused by bacteria in the skin, are less likely to get skin cancer and lymphoma (I guess I should have wished for more pimples in my teenage years).
Anyway, for obvious reasons I am starting to find cancer research interesting. What fascinates me the most is that they haven't figured cancer out yet. It amazes me to think about all that we know, and all we can do, and then to think about all that we still do NOT know and can NOT do. 
I'm realizing we aren't as clever as I thought we were. But we'll get there in a not too distant future - unless of course the current trend towards anti-intellectualism (I miss Ze Frank) gets in the way mucks eveything up.

Note: blue words that are underlined are links to other places :-)

I like this guy more all the time

Just Words?

The verdict is in...

Know your lobbyist

Those in the anti-Kojak camp had better get busy, cause Rod is pitching hard for the shave. Here he is demonstrating the correct razor to head angle (between 17 and 22 degrees). I have to say, he made it look enticingly simple...

 

A health note (4)

Tingling is almost gone in fingers and toes (I'll mention it to the doctor next Thursday, though). Night sweats still hanging around.  Quite a bit of insomnia the last 2 nights. Everything else A.O.K

My apologies

It turns out Anonymous Brian is the culprit. In case anyone saw the post that was up a while ago, I made a few incorrect accusations, and here is my public apology to Rod.

In the spirit of, "Move along. Nothing to see here." I have withdrawn everything referring to the unfortunate business.

If you don't know what I am talking about, perfect!

I need YOUR help!

See post below, then check out the poll in the sidebar.

Everyday is a bad hair day

Most of the time, I look like this:

Because the alternative is to look like this:

I made certain people promise they would tell me when it looked like I had mange. I can see from that picture I just took, that they didn't keep their promise (I actually didn't realize until just now that it had gotten THAT bad)

Anyway, something drastic needs to be done in the hair department!!

And thanks for the hat Susie, I love it :-)

Allergies make me grumpy

They make me grumpy and they make me think that if there is a God he gets a kick out of annoying me. I mean where is the justice in waiting till a guy is just in the upside of chemo and then tossing him into a perpetual state of being about to sneeze? I can't even have a full conversation because half the time my face is all screwed up like I ate lemon as I wait for a sneeze to come.

It started Wednesday night when I made a half-assed effort to help Mathilde clean the house to get ready for the cleaning lady to come (I say half-assed, because no matter what I do Mathilde seems to be able to clean circles around me) . Anyway, while cleaning, a few speck of dust got into my nose and my immune system has been having a hissy fit ever since. Sometimes I think if I had to personify my immune system it would be like the guy in the video below.

"OH MY GOD DUST!



The irony of it is that my body's reaction to the dust is so much worse than if my nose just relaxed and let the dust hang out there. Allergies have always made me think my immune system is retarded. And now, realizing that cancer is my body being its own worst enemy, I'm starting to think there is something to that.

Sorry Rod...

you'll just have to grab a magazine today. (Did I redeem myself?)

Chemo 6.5

I figure I'll officially close out the round 6 posts. I felt good today, I'd say about 90% back on my game. Fingers and toes still tingle (from what I understand that may not go away). I've had a metallic taste in my mouth for 2 days now, as if my tongue is tingling too. It makes certain foods taste strange. No nausea today - I stopped taking the pills yesterday. Had a headache earlier, but it went away with Tylenol (the Danish version). I'm getting the urge to move and stretch, which is good - a sign that I've been sitting on my ass long enough. Had night sweats last night (had to change my clothes). Couldn't sleep so I took a pill (shh). There is also that thing which we probably won't blog about ;-)

Round 6 officially closed (I hope).

Sometimes I feel like an Internet virgin

Last time was when I discovered Will Ferrel's Landlord video months after it was an internet phenomenon. And most recently (about a half an hour) I discovered Clark and Michael which has been around for almost a year now.
That just goes to show, if you keep digging, the Internets will always deliver a smile.

I wonder...

...if it's acceptable to blog about constipation even considering it is a legitimate side effect of chemotherapy.

To the Moms

Yes Brian, I'll be your valentine!

Thanks for the card, it made me smile :-)

Chemo 6.4

This will hopefully be one of the last chemo entries for round 6.  From this point on I am usually on the upswing, feeling more normal with each day.
I was awake most of the day yesterday. Took a short nap around 5:30 and woke about a half hour later to the sound of the girls bouncing and laughing on the trampoline. 

I crashed at 9:30 pm, then woke up at 3 in the morning after a weird dream with a building that swayed in the wind as if it were were made of rubber while I napped on a patio beneath them. The dream ended with me hiking deep in the woods and realizing I had forgotten to bring water. I had to take a leak but couldn't because my suspenders were on too tight. And then a little girl on a bicycle wizzed down the trail singing a song.  

Wow! Now that I've written it down, it sounds like a pretty weird dream (good thing I left out the part about Rod and the 3 naked bimbos packing suitcases in his apartment). I've been having weird dreams lately though, and remembering them - which I usually don't do. 

Anyway, I had a hard time falling asleep again. I contemplated taking one of the happy pills they gave me, but since some unknown author on Wikipedia wrote they are pretty addictive, I decided I'd better not treat them like they're Pez.

I did fall back to sleep again, and when I woke up around 9:00 in the morning Mathilde was bringing coffee and breakfast up the stairs. Emily and Anna piled into our bed and we all snuggled under the comforters while Mathilde read Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire to the girls. (I keep trying to convince the girls that THIS is the chapter where Harry dies, but it's getting so they hardly even roll their eyes anymore).

No night sweats last night.

My Mom has been buggin' me to no end..

So, here are some pictures.

Chemo 6.3

Energy drained pretty quickly yesterday, spent most of the day dozing and doing nothing.  (I've realized it takes about an hour and a half to find and read everything new on the internets. After that you kind of just wait around for somebody to update something).
I've been reading a book (can't remember the name) about a whole village dying from the plaque in the 17th century. The narrator is one of the survivors. Pretty uplifting stuff. And I am not being sarcastic, it actually is uplifting to get a glimpse into the tremendous hardships people have had to overcome throughout history.  My story would be considered the good times compared to what the narrator has lived through.  
So, at the risk of sounding like a whiner, I'll note for the record that my toes and fingers are tingling and mildly numb in a burning sort of way. I have had some mild nausea yesterday and today, but I've been able to fix that by eating something or taking a pill.  I'm less tired today than I was yesterday (probably because Luke and I have spent the morning calculating our sales taxes and that's always good a big energy jolt (sarcasm)). I claim I did not sweat last night, Mathilde claims otherwise. At least there was no evidence when I woke up. 

Chemo 6.2

Slept most of the day yesterday. Woke up around 6:30 in the evening. Mathilde made me an omlete for dinner (she and the girls went next door to eat at her Dad's. I don't feel particularly social when I've had chemo, so I stayed home). 
Other than the weird poisoned feeling, and feeling pretty tired, chemo round 6 is going fine. 
No night sweats last night, which is nice. One of these times, they are going to go away and not come back. Until then I'll just be happy that they are not nearly what they were in the pre-chemo days.

Killer thumb

I was cleaning up an old hard disk a few weeks ago and I came across this gem.  Brian whacked his thumb with a hammer, and in the recovery process his thumb went through a few frightening stages.  I always thought it deserved a place on the internets, so here it is. (And boy do I miss the days when we all seemed to have enough time on our hands to give the photoshop treatment to any family photo with "potential").

Chemo 6.1

I was pretty tired when I got home from chemo yesterday, so after getting something to eat I headed upstairs to take a nap. Just for kicks I popped the sedative they gave me. (I figured I'd spoil myself a little :-)) Well, I don't know if it was the chemo or the sedative, or both, but 3 hours later the girls were standing by the bed giggling as they watched me snore. I didn't wake for the giggling but Anna gave me a recap later, complete with sound effects. I slept until 8 pm and then got up to have dinner and watch the Danish version of American Idol with the girls.
By 11:30 I was ready for bed again.  I slept fine, but had to wake up to change my clothes because of night sweats (wtf is up with the night sweats I wonder?).
Woke up at 8:30 am and took anti-nausea pills. I didn't really feel nasueous, but more like I was on my way to nausea. From my experiments last round I know that means that nausea will set in soon.  I feel fine now at 9:45, having taken the pills and eaten something. My face is all flushed and red from the drugs. Mathilde and my Mom have said I look "healthy" when I get this way.

Some talented Canadians like us :-)

Luke just sent me this link. Very cool :-)

Chemo 6.0

I had my my sixth chemo today, which means I could be half way through the chemotherapy (8 may still be the halfway mark).  The nurse started with an injection of anti-nausea medication as usual, but this time she waited about 10 minutes before starting the first bag of chemo. She hoped this would prevent me from feeling nauseous while getting chemo (as I did 2 of the last 3 times) and it seemed to really work.  

I didn't feel that bad at all, other than the general "they've poisoned me!" feeling, and a bit of chill from getting 2 liters of cold liquid pumped into my bloodstream, everything went fine. I even took a bit nap.

It was the first time getting chemo through my "ipod cable", and that worked pretty slick. Nice to be able to avoid the needle and those industrial medical bandages that rip a whole toupe of hair of my arm when they pull them off.

  

PET scan results - "very good"

After a bit of chaos (as I had feared somebody had screwed up with the scheduling), we were able to meet with my doctor right before I got chemo (I had the bags hooked up but they hadn't turned the valve yet). I don't think Mathilde slept more that a few hours last night, so it was a great relief to both of us when he said the results were "very good". The swollen nodes in my armpit as basically gone. The nodes in my chest, which were about 14 cm wide before I started treatment are now down to 7 cm. The doctor said they really can't get much smaller than that in this amount of time. 

Even better than that, the PET scan showed almost no activity (I guess that would be uptake). He said there is small spot on my left lung, but they think that is most likely tissue recovering from the invasion of the lymph nodes (the swollen nodes were pressing my left lung, and an early scan showed I had liquid in my lung).  So, in there opinion, I am essentially "PET negative".

We asked if that meant the cancer was gone, and he said no. If you looked in a microscope, there certainly be individual cancer cells, and that is what the rest of the treatment is supposed to take care of.  But the good news is the cancer has knocked down so much so that images of my chest no loner look like a rorschach test.  All and all, he was very positive about the results of the test. And so are we! 

Chemo sucks, but it works.

Time flies when you're having fun

Mathilde and I both agree that it feels like much longer than 2 weeks since my last chemo. I guess that's the upside to all of those extra trips to the hospital these last two weeks. It probably had a lot to do with the appointments Tuesday and Wednesday after chemo. They forced me out of my shell early. Something to think about next time.

Health note (3)

Mild night sweats. Shoulder doesn't hurt (sweet Mathilde massaged it for me night last) but it's still  twitching like a man with a tick.

Perpetual motion?

This one may only interest the nerds and part-time inventors.

Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?

Can a 19 year old cure cancer?

"When thinking about cancer, Eva Vertes dares to be different. The Princeton undergrad -- only 19 when she gave this talk -- is asking new, important questions about cancer (could it be caused by the body's own repair system going awry?)"

See her TED talk here. 

A health note (2)

no insomnia. no night sweats. woohoo!

PET scans suck!

I had a PET scan this morning. The memory of it is fading quickly, but when I was in the tube I was certain it was the worst part of all this medical crap. 

I think most people would describe a PET scan as "mildly uncomfortable", or even "not bad at all". If it wasn't for my left shoulder, I'd say the PET scan wasn't bad at all, and I'd probably mostly just be fascinated by the sensation that rushes through your body from top toe when they pump the chemicals in your arm. The sensation starts first in the back of the throat and is similar to drinking a shot of whisky. Then warmth flows quickly down your body, on the inside, and about 3 seconds later it feels like someone wiped a handful BENGAY in your crotch (as Borat would say, "very nice"). Then the warmth fades away and you feel normal again.

Anyway, what sucks about the PET scan, for me, is the simple act of stretching my left arm over my head.  It sounds simple, but my left shoulder still isn't back to normal after the two operations, so getting in the position they want is actually painful (the right shoulder felt fine). I was thinking about it, and in the beginning the pain is very similar to how you might feel if you held a heavy book straight up, over your head, for about 3 minutes or so. That's how it started,  a very manageable pain, nothing to scream about, but you'd probably stop holding the book over your head if you could. Unfortunately, with PET scan, you can't stop holding the book, you can't even move, and PET scans aren't quick.

 

After about 15 minutes in the tube, the muscles in my left shoulder were twitching with spasms, the pain was excruciating and I desperately wanted to just move my arm. And that is probably the worst of it - I think I am pretty good at taking pain, but here I had to be an accomplice to pain. It was tough lying there knowing that all I had to do to make it go away was move my arm. About every 10 seconds I had to fight back the urge to just say, "FUCK this!" and bring my arm down. I think this is why when I'm in there it seems so much like torture - because I can actually choose to make the pain stop (I don't mean torture as simply something painful, but real, "we have ways of making you talk", torture). But of course you don't choose to make it stop and you hold still because you have to (and maybe also because you know if you move you'll just have to do it again).

Anyway, after about 15 minutes or so, I hear a voice on the broken speaker that says "static...scratch...scratch..f...indiscernible...noise...minutes left."   I'm thinking, "f? f what? F as in five, or fifteen? or forty!? God no, I hope she didn't say forty!" I still don't know what she said, it could have been five, but it felt like forty. I know it wasn't forty though, but I honestly don't know if I was in there for 5 more minutes of fifteen. That's the interesting thing about something really painful that doesn't stop, you loose all sense of time.

After however many minutes it was the speaker scratched again, and then again and neither time could I hear what they were saying. So finally, I called out into the big empty room (all the doctors and nurses are in another room behind a thick layer of glass) "I can't hear what you were saying". And then a sweet voice came through loud and clear, "You can take your arms down now." And I did, and just like that the pain went away.

It's been about 2 hours since I got out of the tube, and already now I am thinking I'd take another PET scan over chemo, but I swear, when I was in the tube I was thinking I'd trade chemo for a PET scan any day. 

I get the results on Friday.

A health note

No insomnia last night, slept like a baby (but I did go to bed late and tired). 
Mild sweating. I can't seem to remember what "normal" was for me. I know I have always had a tendency to get hot while I sleep and even sweat, but I can't remember how much or how often. I do remember that the intense night sweats that brought me to the doctor were buckets beyond what I have been experiencing lately.

But, I imagine that for many years to come any kind of sweating while sleeping will make me nervous.

The "Who made Mike Huckabee?" brawl

This was really funny (it gets to be laugh-out-loud-funny about 4 minutes in)

Finally done grading student projects

Even though I wasn't able to finish the semester teaching at ITU, I still agreed to grade the exams. It was pretty stupid, because grading is my absolute least favorite part of teaching (it sucks to know somebody worked really, really hard at something but to still have to tell them they didn't do a very good job).

Anyway, this has been hanging over my head for about a month now, and last night I finally finished. Woohoo!  Now I only have about 3 things that I haven't done that are bugging me. 

PET scan coming up

I have a "mid-treatment" PET scan coming up this Wednesday, and I have no idea what it is going to show, or what I should expect that it shows. I have been doing some research and found this very interesting article:

Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Evolving Concepts with Implications for Practice

Near the bottom of the article, there are bunch of images from PET scans of Hodgkins patients. I have always wondered what they looked like. 

As I understand it, a PET scan works like this. They inject you with some radioactive, glucose syrup kool-aid stuff (FDG). Your body absorbs the FDG, and tissue with high metabolic activity, like tumors, absorb a lot of it. So, an hour after you get the kool-aid they put you in the tube, arms over your head, and start the scanning (fitting me in there last time was kind of like trying to stuff a coat hanger into a toilet paper roll). When they get the images, they look for dark spots, or as they say in medical-jive, "areas with increased FDG uptake".

Below is an image of a Hodgkins patient before treatment, and then after 4 cycles of treatment (that is 8 rounds of chemo). This person has it in chest, armpit and groin. Notice in image B it is gone in the chest and groin. I assume he wasn't done, because typical treatment is at least 6 cycles. I'll be at 2.5 cycles (5 treatments) when my next scan is done. I wonder what it will show?

I am no longer a frog!

Insmonia kicks in

It's been 10 days since the last chemo, and I spent quite a while trying to fall asleep last night. I read that a side effect of one of my chemo drugs was insomnia. It seems to me that there is kind of a pattern where I have a hard time sleeping the second week after chemo. Incidentaly, I have had mild night sweats 3 out of the last 4 nights. I'd feel a hell of a lot better if the night sweats would just go away and not come back. It could be they have nothing to do with the cancer, but still.

"Don't screw up, Democrats..."

I liked this article from the Sunday Times:

Don’t screw up, Democrats, Barack Obama is your man

Quote:

"However, outside her core base of support, all this electability has a dark side with Clinton. She has extraordinary negatives. She galvanises the conservative movement in ways no other Democrat can.

iPod Embedded

Yours truly is lucky enough to be one of the first owners of Apple's newest iPod family member - the iPod Embedded. Never lost, never stolen, and 100% scratch resistent. Now if I can just figure out how to turn down the volume.  

Incidentally, it's also supposed to be slick way to pump chemo in without completely screwing up the veins in my arms.  For the record, I "purchased" my new iPod January 30, 2008.  

I think most of the time I'll wear it like this:

Not quite a cancer blog

I have been interested in the idea of having a blog for over a year now, but I have never really found the time.

In November 2007, I was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma - Stage 2B, which means it is in 2 places (chest and armpit) but only on one side of the diaphragm (the "b" means I was experiencing symptoms (night sweats, weight loss, coughing)). On Nov 28th, 2007 I started my first of what will be 12 to 16 rounds of chemotherapy.

Anyway,  a number of people who care about me suggested that I start a blog so that I could have one place to let people know how I was doing, and then avoid having to answer the same questions to all of the wonderful friends and family who have been giving me great support. I actually don't mind answering the same questions, but I think the blog sounded like a pretty good idea. 

It was also suggested to me that I keep a journal during chemo for my own sake. So that I can look back and find patterns in when I start feeling good again, what kind of foods work, how I react to different pills etc. I have sucked at doing that so far (I am now through treatment 5), but I can see now how it is a really good idea. After awhile one treatment seems to blur into another, even though my reaction and recovery time seems to vary a bit. For example, 3 times while getting chemo I basically felt fine, an 2 times I felt pretty nauseous. I wish I had taken some notes so I could look back and try to figure why the 2 treatments were different than the 3.

So, I am going to try to kill 2 birds with one stone. A blog that others can read now and then if they are interested, and a place where I can record my own notes. But, as I said, I liked the idea of blogging even before I became chemo-boy, so I would like to not just blog about about cancer. I'd like to write about anything that happens to interest or amuse me at the moment.

We'll see how I do though.  I think I'll keep the blog to myself at least for the next week or so to make sure my heart is really in it.  If it is, then I'll start sending the link out.

This made me laugh

"I'm fucking Matt Damon"

It's funny enough on it's own, but the back story is pretty funny too. You can find it here under "Interests and notable events"

Enough screwing around

I've realized I usually start anything with a bit of procrastinating (thus the 4 posts below, and the hour and half wasted downloading and testing software that will make blogging "easier"). But now I've gotten that out of my system.

 

This is my second attempt at a blog. The first attempt (about a year ago) was basically abandoned when I realized that every name I came up with was already taken. This time, however, when confronted with the impossible task of finding  a blog name that wasn't taken, I remembered Sniglets (I think it was my uncle Scott who introduced Rod and I to Sniglets back in the 80's). Anyway, with the help of Sniglets, the blog naming problem was solved.

Blogger widget

Pretty slick for quick posts :-)

Another MarsEdit test.

Still can't get images to upload, and don't feel like downloading and installing Googles Picasa to make it work. Editing from Blogger actually seemed to be fine, and at this point I don't see many advantages to using a desktop application, so I think I am going to quit trying.

Fourth Post

Uploading an image from Blogger works, but I had to accept the terms of service (which I didn't read). I bet it says Google now owns this image. Friggin Google.

Third Post

There is no second post. The second post was a test of the blogging application Qumana. Which looked weird, sucked at uploading images, did fine with links, and couldn't manage to upload to my blog.

This, the Third Post, is a test of the blogging application MarsEdit.
It passed the link test okay (don't like that it shows me the HTML code though).

How does it do uploading images?

Not so well, but I think I just figured out that it is a problem with Blogger and not the software.

We'll see. Here is the post to my blog test.

First Post

Just checking to see if things are working.