We finally met with the doctors from Spain today and it was quite the conversation with that team. The conversation started off that they were worried about me and that they were concerned about how much I decreased after I left the hospital. We had a discussion on why it might have occured and Mel asked if we should have brought the drug that we use to increase the WBC and they said that they could give it to us while we were there. It was amusing because in Canada, that drug costs $1600, but our insurance covers it, so it is not a big deal at all. The doctors told us that what they did, they normally do not do because of what I showed when they opened me up. This was the first time that they tried something like that, so this is all an unknown to them. The surprising thing is that all of the biopsies and tests that they did came back negative. What that means is that the cancer is not in the peritoneal lining. They said that we should continue the treatment we have here, but that they normally do not treat lymphatic cancer with PIPAC. If my symptoms get worse though, they were open to doing it again as it seemed to work, but they do not know why it worked or how there was such an improvement. I told them that I liked to make things interesting for them and was this not fun? They laughed and said they prefer cases where they understood things but they were willing to treat me as it seemed to be having some effect. So for now we will monitor the situation and see if going back to Spain makes sense or not. This is difficult as I am showing symptoms of cancer, just no one knows exactly where it is or what it is doing. Why be simple when you can be overly complex and confuse the hell out of everyone. They suspect that the cancer is lymphatic but it is hard to discrn from CT and PET scans so we will just need to wait and monitor the sitation.
I have been feeling a bit blah over the last couple of days going through the motion and I think a lot of it has to do with me not sleeping well at night where I am getting up and then having a boost drink, staying up for an hour in order to drink it and then getting up later again for a meal. It made me think that if this is the quality of life, is it worth it to go through this and be tired all of the time because of disrupted sleep. At 4am I had a craving for cereal as that is what I use to eat, and I had some and I could start to taste it. It was a bit painful to eat, but it is getting better. This morning my taste buds are slowly getting better and it makes things easier. I think that being able to eat normally and be able to taste foods will help me out. I enjoy eating and it is something that will provide me something to look forward to. Xavier needed his skates sharpened today and Mel would not let me go by myself, but I managed to drive there and walk around the store and get his skates sharpened and back. The whole thing took about 45 minutes as we did it when Mel had a break in her meeting schedule. I feel good and I will start to try and build my strength in the next couple of days prior to me going to treatment next week.
Q