On Friday I had my appointments with both of my oncologists, one for chemo and one for radiation. My first meeting was with the chemo doctor and he had indicated that we are going to change up the treatment a bit for this next round. I had informed him that I had the PICC line removed so I had the option of either having a bag intravenous for 4 days or take pills. With the removal of the PICC he thought that the pills would be a better treatment. The issue however is that with the pills it is not always covered. If you are over the age of 65 then it is covered via some mechanism, but for me it would cost money and he did not want me paying for my medication. Hopefully my coverage and Mel’s coverage will be enough to pay for it, and if not then I do not mind if I have to pay a bit. I will be required to take the pills every day several times a day throughout my treatment. The doctor mentioned that technically it is cytotoxic but we do not need to clean the toilet every time I use it. Surprisingly he was rather positive compared to other times that I have spoken with him.
Meeting with the radiation oncologist was a different story. He seemed to be quite concerned and basically said that things did not look promising. The chemo did not have much effect and was a bit of concern. In the future the chances of the cancer spreading or coming back in the next two years is a bit troubling. The way that I see it, I already went through stage 3 and made it out relatively all right. If it has spread it should be stage 1. Since we know that the chemo does not seem to work we can go with surgery and/or radiation/chemo right from the start. I will be a seasoned pro with it now. I will be going in for tests and being monitored every 3 months for the next couple of years. I understand why the survival rate is what it is for 5 years now. I would advise not looking it up, the numbers are not fantastic. Seeing as I have been an outlier so far, the way I see it, survival rate is close to 100%.
When I went in I arrived an hour early for my radiation scans. My luck did not last however. In the past nurses struggled to give me an IV. This was no exception. It took close to 100 minutes for them to put a line in. It was quite impressive. They tried their best but it was painful, as soon as it hurt I knew it was not in properly. I have done this enough times in the last couple of months that I know a good insertion when it happens. They ended up putting the line in my hand. I also have 4 tattoos now. I was not a fan of that process so I can not see my getting any more tattoos in the future. I originally thought about getting a constellation on my stomach joining all of the original radiation tattoos but I am going to decline that. Why? Because I am a suck and did not enjoy getting these tattoos and have no intention of getting more.
My treatment begins next week or the week after. It will be 5 weeks with radiation treatment everyday and pills taken throughout the day. If it sounds like a lot of fun I a sure it will be. It is 30 minutes each day that I get to spend time with my old colleagues at the cancer center. Luckily it is 7 minutes away so it will not take too much time. I was also told that I could drive there and back, during chemo they recommended that I get rides there and back so this seems to be much easier. I am curious to see how the side effects will be with this. Nausea and fatigue are the regular ones, but those two are easy to overcome. I am going for another scan on Tuesday, but so far they have not seen the cancer anywhere else, and hopefully it remains that way. The bad thing is that if it does not show up anywhere it does not mean it is not in my system, only that we can not see any evidence. Five years from now if I am cancer free then I think I will be more confident that we got it all out.