Start of high dose cycle two.

I had an appointment with my stem cell co-ordinator today and it turns out I was wrong about the second cycle of high dose chemo starting early next week, it starts tomorrow (Friday). That means I will have had just three full days at home (with outpatient appointments on each of those days!).
Whilst I was hoping for more time away from the hospital the flip side to the rapid re-admission is that my recovery from the last cycle has been very strong and the docs consider my mind and body ready to go for the next cycle. High dose chemo is all about the intensity, so off we go again.
Things have definitely been more intense this time around compared to 2008 and 2011, we are now up to day 56 of my treatment, the vast majority of those days have been spent as an inpatient and only a very small handful of the remaining days have been free of outpatient appointments or consultations. The 56 day figure seems completely bizarre to me, I'm not sure if it sounds like it's too long or not long enough, either way we are probably just a bit short of the half way point.
The last couple of days at home have been great, I have been getting a full night sleep, my appetite is in overdrive, I feel relaxed and strong. In other words, ready to go for high dose cycle two. I've made it through one, I can do another one, and when the second one is over there will be only one more left. Easy...

The other huge news today is that my key tumour marker has crashed from a high of 428 to 58, and that was after just the first two cycles of normal chemo, we don't yet know what the high dose chemo has done to the numbers but the hope is that the tumour marker has crashed further. What does that mean? It means that at this stage the chemo is doing it's job and when my tumour marker falls to below 4 and stays there then I will be in remission again. This is extraordinarily good news and gives us a great deal hope, but the news does need to be treated with a degree of caution too, these are still early days. Still, WooHoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers, Pete