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First of all, thank you for praying for us this past week. Thanks for everyone checking in, etc. Overall, things are going well . . . more about that in later paragraphs. I am very glad to be home!
This round of chemo has resulted in more severe gastrointestinal side effects. I started vomiting four hours after chemo ended and it basically hasn't ended yet. It's worse in the mornings and evenings and after movement (i.e. after the MTR stopped moving; after the car stopped moving; after the plane stopped moving, etc.). The heightened hyper sense of smell has kicked back in so that triggers the gag reflex as well. Even talking makes me feel very nauseated, so believe it or not, I'm being quite silent!
I am forcing myself to eat some very plain pasta right now as I haven't had a full meal since Tuesday afternoon. I did manage to eat 1.5 pieces of toast yesterday. I feel wussy and whiny and weak. Have I ever mentioned how much I *hate* throwing up? I would never be a good bulimic! Hopefully, today will see lots of improvement. (Side note . . . one benefit to having no hair is that you don't have to hold it out of your way when you are vomiting into a barf bag! This is probably too much information . . . !)
This makes two down; six to go! One quarter of the way through the chemotherapy!
Now that I have the complaining portion of the program out of the way, let me tell you about the good news! After just one chemo treatment, the tumor has shrunk by about 40%! This was better than the doctor expected. From what I understand, such a large drop in area typically happens after the second treatment. He said that the reduction in size will level out till treatment five, when a new drug will be used and then another sharp drop will occur.
The next good news is that the test results for the Her2 gene that stimulates cancer cell growth came back negative! This is good news on two fronts . . . the first being that there isn't a stimulation for faster cell growth. The second is that while there is a drug to address the faster cell growth, it is quite expensive and some insurance companies balk at paying for it. (This drug has to be taken for a year and it can cost up to $100,000 US). It's nice to know that this won't be a concern for us.
I am so very grateful for how everything is falling into place. We still have no guarantees . . . but we do have the constant reassurance that our Dad loves us and that he will work all of this for his good and glory. Our hope is not in statistics or in medicine . . . but in his righteousness.
And that's a good note to end on! He is good . . . all the time!
This round of chemo has resulted in more severe gastrointestinal side effects. I started vomiting four hours after chemo ended and it basically hasn't ended yet. It's worse in the mornings and evenings and after movement (i.e. after the MTR stopped moving; after the car stopped moving; after the plane stopped moving, etc.). The heightened hyper sense of smell has kicked back in so that triggers the gag reflex as well. Even talking makes me feel very nauseated, so believe it or not, I'm being quite silent!
I am forcing myself to eat some very plain pasta right now as I haven't had a full meal since Tuesday afternoon. I did manage to eat 1.5 pieces of toast yesterday. I feel wussy and whiny and weak. Have I ever mentioned how much I *hate* throwing up? I would never be a good bulimic! Hopefully, today will see lots of improvement. (Side note . . . one benefit to having no hair is that you don't have to hold it out of your way when you are vomiting into a barf bag! This is probably too much information . . . !)
This makes two down; six to go! One quarter of the way through the chemotherapy!
Now that I have the complaining portion of the program out of the way, let me tell you about the good news! After just one chemo treatment, the tumor has shrunk by about 40%! This was better than the doctor expected. From what I understand, such a large drop in area typically happens after the second treatment. He said that the reduction in size will level out till treatment five, when a new drug will be used and then another sharp drop will occur.
The next good news is that the test results for the Her2 gene that stimulates cancer cell growth came back negative! This is good news on two fronts . . . the first being that there isn't a stimulation for faster cell growth. The second is that while there is a drug to address the faster cell growth, it is quite expensive and some insurance companies balk at paying for it. (This drug has to be taken for a year and it can cost up to $100,000 US). It's nice to know that this won't be a concern for us.
I am so very grateful for how everything is falling into place. We still have no guarantees . . . but we do have the constant reassurance that our Dad loves us and that he will work all of this for his good and glory. Our hope is not in statistics or in medicine . . . but in his righteousness.
And that's a good note to end on! He is good . . . all the time!
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