I'll spend the second paragraph catching up those who are new to this blog and thought I only had a blog focusing on crocheting covers for school books that resemble the driftwood that Rose hoarded from Jack as she promised to never let go, but then breaks his frozen solid fingers off to let him sink to the bottom of the north atlantic.
Back in November of '15, we were fresh into the first form of immunotherapy that I would be treated with. We were pushed by some girl to get my brain scanned because at the time we were not aware that melanoma gets it's passport stamped in different places in your body than sarcoma does. Sure enough, the ct scan revealed we had a "tiny" mass in my brain. The plan was for us to radiate the mass as it's small size fell into the range for a mass in the brain to be radiated, but before they could proceed down that road they needed to do an MRI on the brain to get the exact parameters of the tumor. Sure enough, the morning we go in to review the results of the scan, they tell us that the mass had grown rapidly and that radiation wasn't an option anymore. Surgery was the only option on the table. The rest of that chapter was dramatically poured out by Karen and me in our blogs, as well as pictures/comments on Facebook.
Fast forward to last week, Wednesday morning. We had an appointment early in the morning with our oncologist. He was to review the results of the ct scan I had the previous week, with us. News wasn't good up front. The cancer had spread, but only to one part-the brain. I mean, we already had stuff going on in the brain but this was new. The other masses in the body weren't responding in the shrinking sense to the chemo pills anymore, and some were even growing. The one in the brain was tiny- 4mm. But if you see paragraph two (just one above this one, Vic) You will recall that we've heard tiny before, only to be thrown upside down later. So the immediate plan was to stop my chemo pills and move on to immunotherapy. Not the kind I was on before (Obdivo), but Yervoy. I got my first infusion this past Friday. The only side effects are you sometimes feel you have eaten 5 bowls of Raisin Bran substituting the milk for Sunny D...and I thought after cancer in the thigh my running days were over. So, after my first infusion of Yervoy I went to another part of the hospital to get an MRI on the brain. Fast forward to Monday morning of this week. Karen and I wake up and are getting ready for our day. Mine, to change the world of Deaf education. Karen's to make sure that there isn't any drama in the lives of countless housewives in Orange County, Beverly Hills, New York, and other areas. Bless her heart. We are going about our business when we get a phone call asking us to come in so we can review the results of the MRI. We get nervous. The feelings of that rug about to be yanked out from under us like before came flooding back. We go in. The MRI looks great. One of the craziest she says she has seen, but great. We decided on whole brain radiation. Meaning, the radiation will kill all the microscopic cancer in the brain that will not show up on a scan. I'm for it. You only get one shot with whole brain radiation, so I want to get on with it. Permanent side effects: Short term memory loss, foggy memory episodes, a struggle to do computations in my head without writing things down, and a tendency to forget to wash my hands after a violent #2. We rescan in 15 weeks.
I'm in a good mood...better than as of late. There isn't definitive proof the diet is working, or that the chemo or obdivo were responsible for the early success with the tumors, but I'm sticking with the diet because it doesn't make sense to stop something that is amazing for your overall health if you can get to that mental place to do it. I'm all on board for immunotherapy. I have a massive crush on Sean Parker. Google what he's doing with immunotherapy and you might just crush a little on him too. As I've said in a previous posting, "with cancer, there is no good news, just bad news postponed". Well, I'm all in with immunotherapy postponing that bad news indefinitely. I'm not optimistic that Yervoy will cure me, but I'm optimistic that is will postpone bad news until something else can.
So, the night that we found out that my therapy was going to be changing from chemo back over to immunotherapy, specifically, Yervoy, we went over to the Inksmith and Rogers...again. I decided I would really like to get a tattoo of the symbol for Memorial Sloan Kettering. The first and only hospital that said they would take on my case when no one in Florida would operate on me. They removed the first mass we found under my arm. Gave me my functionality back. They are also one of the leading hospitals in the country for developing immunotherapy treatments. They played a huge role in the development of Yervoy. So I thought to myself, "Sloan is putting stuff under my skin. I might as well have them ON my skin."
The symbol was developed in the 1800's I think. The three bars running through the arrow perpendicularly each have their own meaning: Training, Teaching, and Research. The arrow represents the upward progress in conquering cancer. So now, Sloan, all of you, and I are in this together in my heart and skin. Well, I guess you guys can just stay in the heart.
"I'll Swallow Poison, Until I Grow Immune" -Eddie Vedder
With Love,
Brian
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