Struggle.

So I keep trying to update here and failing. It's not a well-known or well-studied side effect but any cancer patient can tell you about "chemo brain." Things start to feel a little fuzzy and for me it becomes very difficult to focus on tasks for more than five minutes at a time. So. I think I'm going to try to keep this as short/to-the-point as possible. (And will likely fail miserably.)

Surgery. Sigh. It ended with the most frustrating possible outcome. My surgeon wasn't able to remove the tumor safely, but she also couldn't access the biopsy sites with just a scope. So she had to make a full incision just to take biopsies. Which, if you've been following along carefully at home, you'll know means that in a few months I will have to another full surgery for the resection of the tumor. Which, to put it delicately, sucks. (What? Trust me, in my head I had many less delicate things to say.)

Pain management's effort was less than stellar. I'm starting to suspect that I have a resistance to some of these lovely opioid drugs, because the team's first try at my hydromorphone dosing by weight and height Thursday night was an abject failure and they eventually ended up pushing me to the maximum allowed dose just to make my pain tolerable. The anesthesiologist came to apologize to me the next morning.

Rest of my hospital stay was...well, a hospital stay. Mostly uncomfortable, although I got lucky and my roommate cleared out on Friday, leaving me with a single for the weekend. Probably for the best, as I was this close to whacking my roommate's mother over the head with my IV pole. Inflicting Dr. Phil on another person against their will should qualify as torture.

Monday, I received my first chemo dose at the hospital with three drugs: vincristine, adriamycin, and cytoxan. I'll talk more about the chemo in detail once my brain recovers from said chemo. Once chemo was finished Monday night and the nurses were convinced I wasn't going to fall over, they let me go home.

Chemo continued with just cytoxan on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm feeling quite a bit better now, but my mouth is plagued with this awful chemical-y/metallic-y taste that makes eating a trial. More on chemo in my next post!

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't thank everyone for the prayers, gifts, cards, well-wishes, and help. So thank you so very much for brightening my days and making life a little easier.