Chemotherapy finished! Out of hospital!

Hi all,
Well that's it for chemotherapy, the third cycle is over, I am out of hospital again and my tumour markers remain at normal levels! It looks more and more like the final score is going to be Team Pete: 1 Cancer: Nil. That is an incredible result in a game where the winner takes all and the opponent is a sneaky, evil bastard that makes up the rules as it goes along.
Team Pete has been extraordinary, I have had the good fortune to have a medical team who all combine talents of extraordinary knowledge, commitment and care. Of course Team Pete has been made up of a much greater range of people than just medical professionals, each of you who have spared a moments thought for me have contributed more than you can imagine.
Of course things are not quite over yet, I still have some the surgery to get through. I should be able to tell you more about that after I meet with the surgeon next Thursday

This last cycle of chemo has been pretty hard and the days since my last post have been a bit of a blur as the side effects of the chemo kicked in harder than ever before. I won't bore you with the details. I think someone must have told snuggles the chemotherapy cat that after six years this would be it's last chance to play, so instead of just toying with me like he has done in previous cycles he decided to get grumpy and whacked me around a bit.

I can't remain too upset at snuggles though, he has saved my life by scaring the cancer out of my body, even if he has left me with a few scars in the process.  I am in recovery mode now and continue to get a little better each day.
Cheers, Pete.

High dose chemo, day 9

Things are still going fairly well, fatigue and nausea remain the main issues. Hopefully the nausea can be  kept at bay with the right medications, in the past it has taken a bit of fiddling around to get the type of medication and dosage right, but it makes a big difference to my energy levels and general well being when we do. In spite of the nausea I am still getting enough food in to avoid too much weight loss, which is great as a significant amount of people who have high dose chemo end up on a feeding tube or being fed through a drip. Obviously I am very keen to avoid that, and as I only have about a week to go before things turn around I think that I can safely say that I will be able to continue to eat the old fashioned way (albeit somewhat slower than my usual scarfing!).
The fatigue is just something that has to be endured. Most of it is due to the chemo, some of it is due to the fact the hospitals are LOUD and sleep is hard to come by, especially in the multi-bed rooms. The problem with the multi-bed rooms is that the beds are only separated by the 'Curtain of Silence'. Designed by Viktor Leaksalotski, the famed Russian nuclear engineer responsible for the containment field at Chernobyl (and, after his defection to the west, the cone of silence that can be seen in the cold war documentary series known as Get Smart), the 'Curtain of Silence' is also totally ineffective at keeping anything in or out. Just like the cone of silence, one of the quirks of the curtain of silence is that it seems to deaden all noise inside its perimeter, therefore the people inside it feel the need to shout, or have their tv blaring, oblivious to the fact that people outside it can hear everything. An additional quirk of the curtain of silence is that it seems to distort the fabric of time so much that the people inside it don't seem to realise that their tv is blaring at 3am... The real trouble with my fellow patients who think it is ok to turn on the tv at 3am is that they seem to have the ability to sleep through anything, including me slamming the toilet door as loudly as possible while they are snoring away during the middle of the day. Revenge may be sweet but sometimes it can be elusive too.
Cheers, Pete.

   

An update at last!

Yes yes, I know I have been a bit slow with the updates lately but you can all relax, put down your mills and boon, turn of days of our lives and read this instead, lucky you!
We are now up to day 8 of the final cycle of chemo and something like day eighty seven since treatment started, so the finishing line for the chemo phase is definitely in sight.
I'm not sure how many of those eighty seven days I have spent in a multibed hospital room, quite a few I suspect... and ohh the funny stories I could tell about my fellow patients. I won't do that though as it is probably not considered fair game to pick on people with cancer so I will have to pick on someone else instead. I have picked on the doctors once or twice but as they can easily afford to launch a civil suite against me if they feel a bit miffed I will have to pick on an  underpaid target instead, i.e nurses.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been full of praise for the nurses at Peter Mac, and I stand by all of my comments to date, they have earned every good word I have written. Now however, I have a slightly different perspective. My enlightenment has come about due to the fact that the room I now occupy is close enough to the staff room and nurses station to actually hear what goes on.
I have never actually been in the staff room itself, and now that I am a little wiser I would refuse to enter anyway, but if I did go in there I would not expect to find the usual table, chairs, unwashed dishes and shit all over the place. No, judging by the noise that emanates from there I would expect to see this:

Granted there is still shit all over the place, but normal staff rooms does not have incessant cackling, nesting boxes, a strict pecking order and a self important, know nothing rooster strutting around the place... oh wait... whatever, email me if you need any eggs.

As for my treatment, things continue to go as planned. The third and final infusion of chemo was completed on Wednesday (huge cheer!), it has made me a bit more tired than last time, but as some of the effects of chemo are cumulative a bit extra fatigue is not surprising. The heavy chemo load over the years has also caused some additional 'peripheral neuropathy', which in my case is just numbness, tingling and poor circulation in the hands and feet, along with some tinnitus in my ears. It is caused by the chemo damaging nerve endings in those locations. I also have some difficulties with concentration due to 'chemo brain', which is difficult to describe, if I could remember what it is like I would tell you all about it... get it? I will also be left with a few other long term issues, but after fourteen cycles of chemo in six years I am not doing too bad.
Friday brought about my final stem cell transplant, so all twelve million of my babies have now come home to roost. No wonder I'm tired! Now we play the waiting game again and hope that I can stay infection free long enough for my stem cells to do their thing again. All being well I should be out of here around Tuesday next week, then we start down the road towards recovery and the planned operation.
Cheers, Pete.

High dose chemo, cycle 3, day 2. Random ramblings

It is now late afternoon on day two of my final cycle of chemo, after having had a dose of chemo yesterday and this morning I now have just one more dose left to do tomorrow and that's it for chemo, forever.. That will be another major milestone we have marched past, and it feels good! Of course I still have the next couple of weeks of side effects to get through, but the end of chemo itself felt like it was a very long way off when the relapse was diagnosed back in February, so it is very nice to be at this point.
I am going along fine at the moment, I had a bit of nausea late yesterday, but I think that was more due to the antibiotic that they have started me on than the chemo.
I don't have much else to report except that my dear Robyn has abandoned me for the day to go and see her Mum, how dare she! lol. In her absence I will have to keep myself entertained by filling the rest of this post with another random brain fart, see below graphs if you wish to read it.
Cheers, Pete.

 



My admission to hospital on Sunday turned out to be late in the day so after having a blood test in the morning we took the opportunity to head out for something delicious for lunch. We were inspired to try Korean food after watching a show on SBS last year called 'Sinae Choi's Korean Food Cult'. Now Mrs Choi* is not a woman to be argued with, if North Korea is silly enough to make a military strike against the south then the south need retaliate with just one fearsome weapon, although I am not sure how you could get her to agree to hang on to the missile that is about to be fired into the heart of Pyongyang... one glance form Mrs Choi would see her simpering sidekick climbing on board in her place, and that would not do at all. I suppose they could just ask her to stand on the edge of the demilitarised zone and stare across the border. It would work on me, but I'm not Kim Jong Un:

 Sorry, wrong picture, try this one:

Oops, wrong again, third time lucky:

That's the one I'm after!

Kim Jong Un is so crazy that he is said to be a fan of Eric Clapton, who said this back in 1976:
"I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking [indecipherable] don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fucks sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he’s a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he’s our man, he’s on our side, he’ll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he’s on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!"
Interesting comments from a guy who built a career on black music. Eric has declined to say much since that would indicate that he is not nuts, he did say in 2004 that his "feelings on this had not changed". In his 2007 autobiography Eric wrote that "since then (being labelled a racist) I have learnt to keep my opinions to myself". That, Eric, is an apology that our apolititians would be proud of. You play a mean guitar though...

Hmm, It appears that I have digressed from my digression... back to Mrs Choi.
So it's hooray for Mrs Choi, who has been keeping the Korean peninsula safe(ish) since.. well,  I don't think anyone really knows how old she is because it's hard to tell and no one is bold enough or silly enough to ask, but rest assured that even if she is in her nineties she probably still has a good fifty years of deterrent value left in her.
Although her value as a nuclear deterrent may be high, to fully appreciate Mrs Choi you need to see her discuss something that she is truly passionate about, namely the preparation, presentation, and etiquette surrounding Korean food.
So it was that with fear in hearts that we decided to try a couple of recipes at home, we thought that they tasted quite good, however I am sure we failed miserably on the presentation and etiquette fronts. Please don't tell Mrs Choi.
*Note that Mrs Choi may only be addressed as Mr's Choi, forget this at your peril!

Annnnyway...Back to our meal, it was delicious! Even though Korea is very close to both Japan and China it's cuisine and flavours are very distinct from either, so it is definitely worth a try. If you find a Korean BBQ place then they will probably cook some of the food in front of you (ok that is a bit like teppanyaki), it it will also feature lots of yummy side dishes (like tapas, but completely different...)
We had Kim chi pancakes as an entree, then we shared a dish garlic prawns and a dish of beef in bulgogi sauce as mains along with the side dishes. Lots of food, but I am on doctors orders to fatten up, and I am pleased to say that I followed doctors orders to the letter!
Brain fart over, Cheers again, Pete.