I'll Be Your Captain

Yesterday I saw my chemo doctor, Dr. Cho. I expressed my concern that I don’t have a Team Captain and he said, “I’ll be your captain!” That was very reassuring.

Unfortunately, everything he had to tell us wasn’t so reassuring. He confirmed the good news about my clear lymph nodes and clean tumor margins. Those factors bode well for the success of my treatment. On the other hand, my prognosis is not as good as I had thought. The outlook if my treatment is not successful and my cancer recurs is grim. This is mostly due to the fact that my cancer is triple negative and so the various long term treatments hold no promise for me. There is little that can be done if the cancer does spread to my brain or bones. If it recurs locally, there is a better chance that treatment could work.

Dr. Cho brought up charts and graphs tailored for my age, health and type of cancer and it breaks out this way: One third are cured with no additional treatment, one third have recurrences, one third die of other causes within ten years. (Which, I assume, means they didn't have a recurrence?) If I have chemo, my odds are increased by about 7 ½ %. That puts my survival potential at about 40% -- give or take a percent. That is lower than I would have hoped, but Dr. Cho reminded us that I beat much worse odds 13 years ago. On the other hand, the fact that this is my second bout with cancer indicates that my body is not very good at defending against cancer cells. That is an even stronger indication that I need all the help I can get and for me that means chemo and radiation. To not put up a vigorous defense now would be a mistake and one I don’t want to have to regret down the road.

I will have my first chemo treatment next Thursday, May 28th, with three more courses at three week intervals. Before that I will have a MUGA scan which is a test to determine if my heart is strong enough to handle the Adriamycin again. It is the best chemo for my type cancer, but is very hard on the heart. Since I had it before, we need to be sure that there wasn’t significant damage the last time around. If my heart isn’t strong enough, we will have to consider a lesser chemo.

I was sick and nauseous all day yesterday. I woke up in the night to throw up. I was dreaming about chemo. I don’t know if I felt nauseous and that made me dream about chemo or if I dreamed about chemo and that made me nauseous. The triage nurse, Val, gave us a tour of the chemo suite and it was all I could do not to throw up again. It will be difficult to be there for three or more hours while I have my treatment.

Dr. Cho gave me prescriptions for Compazine and Ativan to take during my treatments and they will put anti-nausea drugs in my drip when I have treatments. They also give a new drug to boost the blood counts. I won’t have to go in for daily shots of Neupagen like I did last time. It’s a small thing, but I’m grateful.

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