No more IV!

I have to say that carrying around a rolling backpack full of fluids has been the hardest part of the past few days.  The thing is just unwieldy, not to mention you also have to keep it plugged in so the battery doesn't die.  This makes it challenging to use the restroom at night as you have to reorient yourself, unplug the backpack, wheel the thing around obstacles to do your business, and then fumble around again to try to plug the thing in the dark while not electrocuting yourself.

Anyway, today I turned in the backpack!  I put on ten pounds of water weight in two days.  (And it's definitely all water weight since I ate pretty much nothing due to the nausea.)  I feel pretty bloated.  :)

Praise God I'm feeling my appetite pick back up, and I think the anti-nausea meds are working.  All in all, it's been a good day!

-b

Chemo update

Wow, so chemo knocked me out yesterday.  I was pretty dizzy and nauseous, but praise God I didn't vomit.  I only ate a brownie and a slice of pizza yesterday due to the nausea, but I'm feeling much better this morning!  The nurses said I ended the session in much better shape than most patients, so I'm grateful for that.

I'm also super grateful that I'll get to turn in my iv pump today.  It's been a pain wheeling that around everywhere, especially at night when the fluids make me use the restroom every hour.  :)

Thanks for your continued prayers and encouragement!

-b

It's happening!

Hello, friends!  I know I had promised to write more, but I never seem to find the will to sit down and post.  Here are some scattered updates.  Hopefully future posts will be more organized!

• It all begins tomorrow!  Tomorrow I go in to get my chest catheter installed.
• I took a catheter care class yesterday.  It sounds like the dressing gets bloody for the first week.  I'm not looking forward to that; blood (including my own) makes me squeamish.  Luckily, Jenn will be the one to change the dressing.  :)
• I'm a little worried about cleaning the catheter because if you forget to clamp it, it sounds like blood will pour out like a faucet.  Oy.
• Speaking of the catheter, I didn't realize how bulky they are.  (See the below image).  I'm a little worried about how I'll sleep since I often sleep on my chest.  That will take some getting used to.  I'm also worried about it getting snagged and pulling on the stitches.  I guess I won't be doing anything too physically strenuous, so it shouldn't be an issue.

• You're also not supposed to get your catheter wet (they're concerned about mold growing on it).  Surprisingly, they recommend Glad Press'n Seal wrap that you can use to cover it when you shower.  Who knew?
• Tomorrow they'll also hook me up to a portable IV.  They need me hydrated because the chemo the following day can irritate your bladder, so they want you flushing frequently.  When I go in for chemo, they'll also give me some drugs that will make me have to urinate every ten minutes.  Oh boy.  :)
• Tomorrow is also my last day before health precautions go into effect (no eating out, no going into public without my hepa filter mask, no leaving the windows open in the house, no gardening, eating only a low microbial diet, etc.)
• I happened to check my work email yesterday.  Apparently my group has been re-orged, and I now have a new manager.  It should be really interesting when I get back to work!

People ask me if I'm ready for everything.  Hrm.  I feel ready, but I'm also worried that I haven't given this enough thought.  Perhaps that's the grace of God though so I don't worry.  After going through the various preparatory classes, there are lots of potential side effects from all of the drugs and various procedures.  I won't list all those now, but it would be easy to look at all those things and despair.  I'm grateful though that God is the all-knowing Creator who knows my body inside and out.  He's in control, and I have no need to worry.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

    the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

    his understanding is unsearchable.

29 

He gives power to the faint,

    and to him who has no might he increases strength.

30 

Even youths shall faint and be weary,

    and young men shall fall exhausted;

31 

but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;

    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

    they shall walk and not faint.

-Isaiah 40:28-31

Things are happening

Hi friends,

Sorry for the lapse in posting again, but I hope to post more regularly as there's more going on.  At a high level, I finished my 6th round of chemo, and I showed a good enough response to the treatment such that they recommended moving forward with my autologous stem cell transplant.  Praise God for Google - I started my 3-month short-term medical leave this week.

Next week, I'll be getting a chest catheter placed, will have a round of chemo, and will start injecting myself with drugs to stimulate stem cell production.  The injections will continue for a couple of weeks before the levels are high enough for a collection.  From there, I'll have hardcore chemo (Melphalan) before they give me my collected stem cells back to rescue my immune system.

Sounds pretty simple, though I'll be immuno-compromised for much of the time, so I'll be spending most of my days at home.

Anyway, I hope to post more in the days to come.  In the meantime, I'm grateful for many things:

• I have this week to enjoy my health/freedom.
• Jenn and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary this past Friday!
• My coworkers gave me a care package with dinosaur stickers, a dinosaur puzzles, and various things to do while I'm home or at various appointments at Stanford.
• Many people have offered to take me to appointments and/or stay with me since I'll need a 24/7 caretaker for much of the time.  I feel very blessed.
• I got to hang out with a bunch of my high school friends and their kiddos.
• I got a note from my insurance provider saying I was paying much less for my chemo drugs than I should have been.  Since it was their error though, they said they wouldn't bill me for the past six months, but that I would be paying the correct amount going forward.  The nice thing is that I should hopefully be done with the oral chemo for a while, so praise God for His provision even through the clerical error!

More soon!

-b

Prayers of Children

A couple of Jenn and I's best friends from Berkeley live in Vallejo now, so we don't get to see them or their three kids very often.  I got an email from them this morning saying that their family prays for me constantly.  I was told that their oldest (he's four) had this to say during family prayer time: 

“wait, i have one more thing to pray for.  Father God, thank you for bryan and thank you we got to meet him once.  i pray he wouldn’t have cancer and that he would feel better.  in Jesus’ name, amen”

So cute.  Thank you, God, for all those that continue to lift me up in prayer.

Transplant!

I met with Stanford's Bone Marrow Transplant team last week, and they recommend I move forward with an autologous transplant in September.  Here are some takeaways from the meeting:

• I don't need to make a hard decision.
  They are recommending I do a stem cell transplant using my own harvested stem cells.  They say that my case is pretty straightforward and they think the auto transplant is the only real choice to consider right now.  I was worried they'd recommend I go the allogeneic transplant route using stem cells from a donor.  That procedure has an extremely high risk of complications, so I'm glad I don't have to make that decision at this point.  They said I could consider an allogeneic stem cell transplant down the road, so getting an autologous stem cell transplant now doesn't close any doors.
  
• Offering me a stem cell transplant now is a good sign.
  The reason why the autologous stem cell transplant is the obvious recommendation at this point is because I'm healthy, still really early stage in the cancer (no kidney/bone damage, barely any anemia), and responding well to treatment.
  
• The transplant itself doesn't seem too terrible.
  There will be appointments and tests in the six weeks leading up to the transplant date.  At some point during that six week period, they'll give me drugs to cause my body to produce a large amount of stem cells.  They will eventually harvest those stem cells before nuking my body hard to try to eradicate any remaining trace of the cancer.  They then give me back my harvested stem cells to rebuild and restore my immune system.
  
  The procedure will be out-patient, and I'll only need to spend one night in the hospital (the day after the transplant itself).  I'll be immuno-compromised at various points in time, so I'll need to stay in except when being transported for regular doctor visits.  They'll provide a mask for me to wear.  I'll need a caretaker for at least the first 30-days after the transplant, but they say it's more for things like food-preparation and driving me to appointments; I should be able to do most things myself (though I'll be very fatigued).
  
  I'll probably need to miss 2 months of work at minimum, but probably closer to around 3 months.  Praise God that Google gives up to 90 days of fully paid medical leave though, and if I need more than that, I can still get partial pay.  What a blessing!
  
• In the meantime, I should finish up two more cycles of chemo.
  Last Friday I started my fifth 28-day cycle of chemo.  I aim to wrap up my sixth cycle of chemo at the end of August so we can move forward with the transplant.  

Anyway, I'm sure I'll get more details in the weeks to come.  For now, I'm actually a little excited about the transplant.  I'm sure the physical effects won't be fun, but the whole procedure sounds fascinating.  I'm also looking forward to getting as much of the cancer wiped out from my body as possible.

Things that I'm looking forward to:

• I want to dye my hair before shaving it off.  I'll probably have my hair a different color for a week or so before they need me to shave it.  There's probably no better time for a change.  :)
• I will get a port installed in my chest for the chemo.  A kid at our church, Jon, has been going through chemo and has a port.  We'll get to be twins!  It's also pretty cool having a hole sticking out of your chest.  I'm sure I can gross a few people out with that, which should be pretty funny.
• Recovery time.  I've been working while on chemo, and while I can handle things physically and mentally, it's still a bit wearying to do both.  It will be nice to shut off work for a bit and focus on recovery.  Not to mention the nurse told me to stock up on books, movies, and video games since I won't be able to be too active during the first few weeks of recovery.  

Chemo Brain

So I think I've found my first chemo-related symptom, Chemo Brain!  Over the past couple of weeks, I found myself struggling over finding the right word, and it's been a little frustrating.  It hasn't been anything major though; I'll just be having a conversation and there's a word I'm trying to come up with (not a big or complicated one), but I won't be able to come up with it and will just get stuck there.  Apparently it's a pretty common side effect of chemo.  It sounds like it goes away over time, which is good.

I have an initial consultation with the Stanford Bone Marrow Transplant team tomorrow.  We'll see what I find out!

Thanks for your continued prayers and encouragement.  :)

-b