Fourth Time's the Charm

It's so seriously cheesy, I HAD to use it. Rabbit's foot, lit up number 7,
 four-leaf clover AND a horseshoe? I mean, come ON!

Fourth chemo treatment. I'm a third of the way done!

Somehow, that isn't quite as heartening as it could be. Perhaps because eight is double the number four, and I've only done four treatments so far. Maybe that's it.

What am I going to do after I get to ten? I only have so many fingers.

So, I delayed getting my fourth treatment by a week, because my son was getting married, and I wanted to be as present and non-fatigued as I possibly could be. It worked. Mostly.

I'm starting to get some pain in my kidney. The one that has the other kind of cancer. See, the more aggressive of the two is the Hodgkins, but that doesn't mean the renal kind has just taken a break. My best layman's guess is that it's continuing to grow. Much more slowly than we would assume the Hodgkins would, but that doesn't mean it's just waiting around for us to cut it out.

Which is exactly what we're hoping to do. The idea (desire, hope, wish?) here is that all of the cancer in my body except the mass in the kidney is lymphoma. We treat the lymphoma, and then just take out the kidney. I've got two. No biggie, right?

But now it's starting to hurt. No bueno.

The good (I guess?) part of things is that now I get to go in for another PET CT. They'll make me drink radioactive lemonade, and it'll show us what's happening with the tumors that are in the various places in my body. If they've all shrunk except for the mass in the kidney, that means they're all lymphoma. We kill off the lymphoma--Todd--and then just wait for my body to be well enough to handle the surgery needed to remove the kidney (the RCC--Wayne).

At least, that's what I think the plan is.

The pain thing complicates the issue a bit. They might want to go in and radiate my kidney.

Here's the thing though. I still haven't gone through the entire list of side effects with the chemo yet. I've had a new one pop up.

Hiccups.

Sounds cute, right?

These aren't just hiccups, though. So far, I've had two bouts of it today, each lasting HOURS.

Hiccups stop being funny after the first fifteen minutes, in my experience.

Sorry. Sidetrack.

The point is, I shudder to think of what may come with the radiation. So far, I haven't lost my hair (what I have of it, anyway) or my beard. But that might not be the case if I start getting stuff irradiated.

But the pain, though...

I did some exercises today that seemed to lessen the pain some. They're the same back exercises that almost kept me from getting the MRI, because they were working so well on my back pain.

It's called the Egoscue Method, FYI. Like, if you're dealing with pain, Pete Egoscue has probably got you covered. Just remember that if your pain lasts longer than a month or two, you might want to get it checked out.

Anyhoo, I did those exercises this morning, and they did seem to help. The pain feels quite different from the pain I was feeling before. This one's deeper in, off to the side--what you might expect from kidney pain, I suppose.

So, those are my ramblings for today. I just ate a meal that was brought over by one of our neighbors--ham and mashed potatoes, which were quite good. We also got a gift basket from one of the kindest couples in our congregation (we call them wards, because we need to be different). It included a throw blanket for me to use during chemo treatments, as well as a Paddington stuffed bear and hardbound book.

That's going to be for our grandchildren. To remind them of the time their Pa-pa got sick and people were kind to us and helped us through the difficult times.

I look forward to that.

Oh, also. Each time I go in for chemo, I get a new pair of socks. The latest:

Shark socks FTW.

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In our next installment, we'll go into the details of dry, itchy skin brought on by chemo treatments. Yay!

Next post.