Nine down, one more to go

(9/24/09)

What a way to spend a summer. Well, not the whole summer. I guess things were okay up until the beginning of August. The Navelbine/Cytoxan treatment regimen I was on wasn't too bad to handle. I was still able to get out and climb a bit, go to school, do some normal stuff. Then August hit with its lung issues, surgery plus complications, then the completely unexpected liver issue. Now it's almost the end of September and I can barely walk around the block without getting winded.

Emotionally I think this has been the hardest part of this whole ordeal. Somehow, in the beginning, partial denial plus hopefulness buoyed my spirits. I really thought that year or so of chemo was going to be the trick. Even with the lung recurrences, it looked like the radiation therapy was doing its job. Now, trying to recover from lung inflammation and facing the possibility of metastasis in yet another organ. . .

I think what helped before was that despite what was coming at me, I could still occasionally pull of a semblance of a life. I could get myself up a couple of climbs at the wall, I could get into school and make a little progress on my thesis. Heck, I defended my thesis a week after my first VATS (lung surgery)! I even took a few trips with friends and got to go to India for the first time.

Right now, though, it's all I can do to haul myself out of bed in the morning. Sitting on the couch is of course super boring, but it's about all I can handle. Even conversations get me a little winded. I know it will get better. Day by day my appetite gets better. Hopefully I"ll start to gain back those ten pounds I lost in the past month or two. My mom's been feeding me quite well, and I've got good friends coming by to visit (though there could always be more - hint, hint).

Anyhow, for now, I'm looking forward to getting tomorrow over with, and getting a week's break. I've lucked out in some sense, in that the worst side effect of this Irinotecan drug - diarrhea - hasn't really affected me at all. It's just left me incredibly tired. Whew.