It's been a while...

I feel like nothing is going on and everything is going on at the same time.  Things have been mostly more of the same, going to IV's on a regular basis and spending a lot of time in doctors offices and clinics.  When I haven't been there I have been spending a lot of time with my family.  I have been so busy for months but it has been a good kind of busy and the past three months have just flown by.  I have been hanging out at dads quite a bit and I even caught my very first salmon!  Another check for the bucket list :)

Cooking breaky

I went on a road trip with my mom and aunt at the end of May.  Our whole trip was rock hounding in southeastern Oregon.  We found lots of agate and sunstones and some apache tears, the weather was nice and I always love camping.  I always sleep better in a tent in my sleeping bag than I do at home in bed or in a strange hotel with crunchy bed sheets and never enough soft covers.  A nice soft sleeping pad and puffy sleeping bag is always the preference in my book and feels like heaven.  One night we even got to sleep in a teepee!  It was awesome and now I totally want a teepee.  I felt like I was back in time sleeping next to the crackling fire in the teepee.  Does it really get much better than that?!  Way better than a hotel.

After my little trip it was back to the grind of chemo and C IV's.  I also had a CT scan in June.  I was really hoping that the results would say "What cancer?" and my plan was to hopefully take a break from chemo for a few months.  Lately, I have really been feeling the effects of the chemotherapy and scheming up a plan to take a break.  Every time I get it lately it feels a little worse each time, like it's starting to eat away my brain again, making me very tired and low energy for about a week afterward.  My blood counts are looking pretty good though (as good as they are going to on chemotherapy anyway) so I really am not complaining too much because things can always be worse.

Firemaker!

Soooo.....back to the scan.  The scan showed that there is a tumor that started growing again and it has actually grown 30% in the last two months, so it is something to be concerned about.  My oncologist  contacted my radiologist and together we determined that the best course of action is going to be to get internal radiation again (Y-90 or yttrium 90 radioembolization).  Remember the last time I got radiation?  It was last year on Valentines day and it unexpectedly wiped me out for months.  This time I am manifesting an easy recovery.  I know what to expect and I am pretty sure that I have my meds sorted out this time.  They are also going to only radiate one tumor on the right side of my liver.  Last time they radiated numerous tumors in the smaller left side of my liver which was right against my stomach and I feel that is what caused a lot of the pain and delayed my recovery.  The right side of my liver is the more "healthy" side and it has actually grown about 30% to compensate for the carnage on the left side of my liver.  I am thinking that because of these things this radiation surgery shouldn't be nearly as bad as the last one, right? Yes, right :)

Me and my mama in a beautiful canyon

This procedure is going to happen at the end of this month.  My mom and I are going on another road trip tomorrow to do some more rock hounding and some touristy sight seeing for a couple of weeks (more camping and late night stars!) and once I return I will be getting an angiogram surgery to map out my veins and blood vessels, and to measure how much of the Y-90 they will need to blast my tumor into the next dimension.  After they determine those measurements and routes through the superhighway of veins and blood vessels to the tumor I will have approximately 7 days before the radiation surgery happens.  By my calculations after I return from this road trip I am going to be busy for a while...However, I am going to heal fast, fast, fast!  Once I am all healed up from my radiation my father and I are planning another rock hounding adventure in Colorado and Utah.  I figured I might as well have something to look forward to in order to heal faster from my surgery and radiation.  The promise of hunting rocks and sleeping under the stars should do the trick :)

I'm hoping all of  you out there are having a wonderful summer and are all happy, healthy, and full of life!

Cancer Can Suck It!!!

Never a dull moment in the life of The Cancer Assassin!

My mom came down to Portland on Friday for what we both thought would be a pretty uneventful visit with my oncologist to discuss the results of the CT scan I had done last Wednesday.  I knew that the left lobe of my liver looked pretty badly beaten up with battle scars from the last chemo onslaught and I also knew that there were new tumors in there too.  I expected that it would be pretty much the same as the scan I had done not even a month ago and that this was all just procedural so that we could begin the next radiation treatment within the coming weeks.  What I did not expect was bad news, but bad news is what we got.

6 miles in on Eagle Creek

Apparently my cancer has now metastasized into what they think to be some nearby lymph glands.  The trouble right now is my oncologist was really sketchy on saying exactly what this new mass was, although he kept insisting it was most likely a lymph gland.  This new mass is pushing on my IVC (inferior vena cava), my portal vein, my diaphragm, my spleen, my stomach and everything else in that vicinity making for some really uncomfortable times on occasion and on other occasions making for a trip to the medicine cabinet for morphine.

The CT report describes this new mass as a "low-attenuation lesion" which means that it is not solid enough so that light cannot pass through it...in other words the higher the attenuation the more solid the mass is, so I am going to milk that statement as good news.  At least it is not solid enough so that no light passes through...  The report also suggested that the new swollen mass could be a result of the compression of the tumors on my arteries and such...

Basically what it boils down to at this point is this:

I got bad and ambiguous news on a Friday afternoon leaving me to sit with my concerns, thoughts, worries, fears, and questions all weekend long.  No one really knows anything yet and my next step is to contact my radiologist and go over the scan and reports with him.  Radiologists are more accustomed to reading and looking at scan images so it was suggested to me that instead of going over my scan with my oncologist I should be going over it with a radiologist and that is exactly what I am going to do before I make any decisions.  I also have a call in to my Natural Doctor and will be speaking with him as well about my options.  Oncologist is recommending more chemo again.  I am not sold on that idea.  I know from experience that although chemo kills cancer cells it also kills lots and lots of healthy cells too not to mention the horrid side effects that come along with it.  I am talking quality of life here.  I think that this round I may just stick to natural medicine.

Tumors are not the problem here.  The tumors are the symptom of my cancer.  We can use chemotherapy OR we could use natural methods all day long killing tumors but until the real underlying problem that is causing the tumors to grow is fixed and the whole body is healed the tumors will just keep coming back.  It is time to get down to the nitty gritty again and be insanely vigilant and healthy.  It may just be time for something drastic.  I KNOW that it is time for a vacation.

This new mass appeared in the short time of one month! This is scary to me!  How much time do I have to peruse the choices of this new decision I must make?

A friend asked me this weekend "What am I going to do?"  My reply was "I really don't have any choices."  The only thing my insurance will cover is more chemotherapy.  It wont cover any natural therapies like high dose vitamin C therapy which is natural chemotherapy and doesn't have any negative side effects and kills cancer every bit as well as chemo does.  My only choices are a) get chemotherapy or b) do nothing.  I simply cannot afford to pay for natural therapies, they are not cheap. But I don't want to get more chemo and live the rest of my days being so sick from treatment I cannot enjoy my life.

I just wished that I would fall asleep last night and wake up to realize it was only a dream or that maybe it would just vanish as mysteriously and quickly as it appeared.  I wonder that if I stuck my head so far in the sand all this cancer crap would just disappear, you know "out of sight, out of mind".  I don't want to sit and worry about it all so I have been trying not to think about it.  What is the use in getting all worked up over something that I really don't even have all of the information about just yet.  It wont do any good and will just stress me out.

It's crunch time.