All is Well…. And the rest of the story…
Dear Family and Friends,
It's been almost three months since I've emailed! Bad Mugsy.
Chemo 1, 2, and 3 we've covered in emails and they were educational and new. Chemo 4 and 5 were pretty similar, the actual chemo days (2 days with my type) were pretty normal, but the following week my body was possessed. Nausea, bitchy, tired yet unable to sleep, and a sore back side of my head. Seems like everything went away on the 8th/9th day and I was back to normal. So the thought was YEAH, just one more on Feb 18th and 19th!!!! Well, I'm home after a meeting with the doctor today and I'm doing fine but no chemo. Unfortunately, my blood work does not agree with how I feel, and the Oncologist felt it was good to postpone a week to give the blood more time to build back. He called it a "cumulative" effect of all the past chemo's and it's not unusual for the blood not to bounce back as quickly. I also have a bit of a cold, perhaps that made a difference. So hopefully next week will see a rise in my blood counts and I can finish this.
So what next….. After the chemo is done we have some choices. A month ago the Oncologist spelled out what the standard of care is for my type of Follicular Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and it included the following: Rituxin only on a schedule of every 8 weeks for 2 years!!! YUK!!! I was having sympathy pains for my liver having to filter all that stuff. The thought of putting that crap in my body for two years was something to research and research I did. Came out more confused in the end but had lots of questions which were answered in our appointment today. The main reason to continue the Rituxin would be to try and extend out the period of remission. However, studies are blurry as to what the percentage of additional remission is. Studies have been done on people with my same type of cancer, but not the same mixture of chemo (Rituxin and Bendamustine), so that is inconclusive. My doctor is great, we batted things back and forth and the end result is we will wait to see a comparison of the CT Scan which I will do late March with the one we had last December. Remember, the enlarged nodes went from the size of an Orange in September, to the size of a pea in December, and the normal size of a node as viewed in a CT Scan, is nothing to see….. Cute.
I do give a very sincere apology for being remiss in keeping you all informed. When the Doctor said to go LIVE your life I did just that and email is not that high on my life events. Sorry.
So that's all for now folks and I do promise to try and get better at writing, I really will try.
Love and hugs to all and thank you again for all your kind words and prayers; I love you!
Mugsy
P.S. For those who would rather read the blog and see some ugly photos…. http://updatefrommugsy.blogspot.com/
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