I began a second chemotherapy regime in June. This one was a three-chemical mix called ICE, and was meant to be administered once a week for six weeks to start. Unfortunately, unlike the CHOP mix, which had relatively few negative side-affects for me, ICE had a particularly nasty one - mucositis. Mucositis is a degradation of the tissue lining your mouth, esophagus and intestines. It's difficult to eat and swallow, and going to the bathroom is painful. Because I got a severe case of it, my six chemo sessions were interrupted a few times to let the mucositis subside a bit before another dose. It took about ten weeks for the six sessions, but when they were through, in August, a PT scan again showed no hot spots. I was in remission for the second time.
Despite that remission, I was already in the queue at the Arizona Cancer Center for a stem-cell transplant. My Oncologist had put in that request in June, at the start of my ICE treatment, and explained to me that the fact that my lymphoma had restaged indicated that it had become resistant to the CHOP chemo. And that that in turn meant there was a good likelihood that it would eventually become resistant to the ICE treatment. I was in remission now, but there was a good chance that remission would last for only half of the previous one - maybe ten months - and that if I did experience a restaging, they would be down to just one chemo mix left for treatment. Luckily for me a spot opened up in the Oct. stem-cell transplant program and I began the preliminary process for acceptance.
I'll continue to give my personal status updates in this section, but the details will be contained within the pages labeled Qualifying Tests, Pre-Transplant, Transplant, and Post-Transplant, along with the pain assessment grids I used to manage the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment