Still Persevering

My weeks have been filled with treatment and, consequently, dealing with the side effects each brings. My neuropathy continues to get more pronounced, but my Stanford doctor has asked me to try to hang in there until March when he will see me and can evaluate my response. Acupuncture treatments do help some. They're not covered by medicare but I still try to go at least once a week.

Once a month I get all of my drugs and so it has taken a little time to determine which drug is causing me such severe side effects. Through email conversations with my Stanford doctor it has been determined that I am having a rather severe reaction to the Zometa (bisphosphonate). It was given over a longer infusion time of 1 hour this past week which did reduce the level of side effects, but we have decided to switch to a different one and this infusion may also be moved to a day that I'm not getting chemo.

Friday, February 10, was my big treatment day for this month. My blood work was done the week before and my white count was too low for treatment. So we had to travel to Chico on Wednesday and Thursday for neupogen shots to force my bone marrow to make more white blood cells. As it turned out, one shot would have been enough as my white count was really high on Friday and my red count was really low and was borderline for ordering a transfusion. Blood counts always get a lot lower in the succeeding days following treatment, so within a few days I could barely get around as my red count got really, really low. A CBC was done again on the 17th prior to treatment and I was glad that things had leveled out. Fortunately, I was only getting one chemo drug and my steroids, so shouldn't have as much difficulty this week.

In January I had a follow up appointment for the kyphoplasty done here in Redding in September. We took all the reports and CD's from the MRI's done at Stanford to this appointment with the local interventionl radiologist. He discovered that there is another compression fracture visible on the CD that the Stanford report did not mention. He showed me on a chart that this is the fracture that is causing my current discomfort. He does not want to do a procedure now either, but it means I have to wear the back brace again and am very limited again with what I can do. I am to contact him after I complete my treatment. He is hopeful that if I don't have to be in treatment too long, that there might be some healing without further procedures. However, the steroids I have to take every week interfere with the healing and the bone building from the bisphosphonate will take quite a bit of time before I experience much help with my bones.

After much consideration and prayer, I did go ahead and begin another semester of choir. Since my treatments are on Friday, I am feeling pretty good on Thursday. I was told again that I need to keep moving and keep my arms moving without lifting, so choir does satisfy those requirements. Also, in all the reading I have done about living with cancer, it is encouraged that a person have something they do that is not related to cancer cause cancer can and does end up consuming your life.

We have determined at this time that the protocol for stem cell transplant at Stanford would not be a good fit for me. We have asked for a referal to the transplant program at UC San Francisco and are waiting to hear from them.

Thank you for you email, notes, cards and phone calls. They always seem to come just when they are needed most. Your encouraging messages always lift our spirits. It is a constant battle to keep our spirits up when my side effects have to be dealt with on a weekly basis and there are sometimes just a few days of feeling like I can function. It is also a struggle for me to have lost so much independence. I am very dependent on Steve, or whoever I'm with, to lift things for me and to have an arm to hang onto when I walk so I don't fall. My feet are numb, my lower legs are numb, my vision is a little blurry, and my drugs make me dizzy enough that I sometimes feel like I'm on a boat, and I must not fall anymore as my back cannot take another injury. Other than that, I still have hair, although quite thin, and I still have a rosy glow to my cheeks compliments of my steroids.