Chemo Update: Food for Thought

Chemo fucks with your body. After only three treatments, things have started to change. I’m retaining water and bloating, and I have these small tremors in my hands. I’ve also pretty much lost my sense of taste. Everything tastes like cardboard: crunchy cardboard, soft cardboard, occasionally tart cardboard. It’s the oddest thing to pop a piece of chocolate in my mouth and not be able to tell if it’s chocolate or a piece of potato. Apparently, it’ll come back once the chemo stops, but right now, nothing. The first time I noticed it, I had tried a spoonful of yogurt. I couldn’t taste “yogurt,” so I told Matt it had gone bad. He tried it and said it was fine. Now, I pick food based on the consistency (crunchy, soft, etc.) rather than the taste. Perhaps it’ll be a good thing to help me keep off the weight that the steroid is making me gain (water retention). Amazing the amount of comfort we find in food that’s missing when we can’t taste it.

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Cancer Update - The Chemo Sphere

Just home from my first day of chemo. So far, not feeling any different at all despite having five new drugs in me. (Five!) Had a great chicken teriyaki lunch in advance, then an hour at the doctor’s. Here are some photographs from today’s excitement!

Matt needed to get fortified for the excitement.

Hooked up and ready for lift off!

Some of the tools of the trade.

First treatment all done!

Look at the swag I got! Like being nominated for an Oscar!

Cancer Update

Visited my blood-cancer doctor today. He told me a recent blood test showed my myeloma may not be as advanced as previously thought. It’s still there and still bad, but rather than being in the third stage, the doctor thinks I might be borderline between stage two and three -- which is a good thing. He offered me the choice of delaying treatment to wait and see how the disease progressed. I told him that, while I don’t want to be “aggressive” in my treatment, I do want to be “pro-active” and see if we can control it even if it isn’t so far developed. He said that was exactly what he would recommend. So now, it could be only a few months chemo (rather than the original plan of four or five months), remission, followed by waiting to see how well I continue to do rather than just going for the stem-cell transplant.

Cancer Update Number Three

Met with the blood-cancer doctor Thursday. It’s multiple myeloma -- the worst of the three stages, but still not as bad as amyloidosis. So, there’s that. One of the more interesting things I learned was that I might have had myeloma for years, festering away undetected under the surface. That could explain a lot about my health in the past few years.

I’ve got several months of chemo ahead of me (starting in a couple weeks) in the hopes that I will be zapped into remission. If that happens, then it’s off to the hospital for a stem-cell transplant. The doctor says there’s no cure, but the transplant could offer complete remission. Isn’t that the same thing? If everything goes well, I’m likely to have five more good years -- possibly ten, given advances in treatment. So, fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Cancer Update Number Two

Yeah for me! It looks like I have the not-so-bad cancer called myeloma. Meet with the doctor next week for confirmation, but the bone-marrow-biopsy results seem pretty conclusive. Not sure yet what that means in re treatment or whatever. Have to wait another week for that news.

Cancer Update Number One

Well, it appears I’m special. I was diagnosed with amyloidosis (a bad bone-marrow cancer) after my kidney biopsy in November. My blood-cancer doctor thinks it might instead be myeloma (a not-so-bad bone-marrow cancer) based on my lack of other symptoms. Met with my doctor today. He reviewed the results from the myriad additional tests he’d had me take in an effort to answer the eternal question: which cancer is it? The results are inconclusive and weird -- so much so that he’s going to present my case to a cancer board this week to get their input. After that interesting conversation, I had a bone marrow biopsy. In case you’re wondering, yes it hurts like shit. Really.