And Then I Got Cancer

I got so many presents today. Mom and Dad came by with cute outfits and a tiara and lava lamp that David sent. Diane came by with a bag full of colorful yarn and a crochet hook and books. Lynn left a surprise beautiful set of paintings for my wall. With me in my hospital bed and everyone sitting around me I felt like I was holding court for just a minute. This morning I woke up with a warm red left arm. The danger of having a catheter in my vein is the possibility of developing deep vein thrombosis. So I went off to the ultrasound to check for clots. All was clear, so I started experimenting with my own workout regime to help get the blood flowing. Lots of leg swinging and squats and things. My blood levels are starting to drop off, so I could only handle a little of this. I guess my guts are also getting obliterated, because I can't seem to digest raw vegetables anymore. You should hear all the belching and farting going on in my room today. Actually, I take that back. I...

Wellllll...it could be better. It could be a whole lot better. My chromosomal tests came back with the dreaded monosomy 7. This means that, in the cancerous cells, chromosome 7 is missing its pair. I'm no geneticist. I don't even know if I spelled geneticist correctly. But I hear monosomy 7 type AML is very resistant to treatment. As in very difficult to get into remission. So what does that mean? I told you about those three risk groups (favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable). This places me squarely in the unfavorable group. There was a study done on ten people under the age of 60 who had this type of AML who underwent treatment. After four years, two of them were still alive. This study represents the most optimistic odds of survival. I guess with monosomy 7, age isn't really a helpful factor. What happens now? I'm going to go through this round of chemo as expected. Hopefully that will get me into remission. But regardless, I will be looking for a stem c...

Faces are getting familiar around here pretty quickly. I see the same handful of people multiple times a day, every day. But here are the two dudes who are making all the decisions, pulling the strings, bringing the bad news, poking me with needles in places that should never get a taste of metal, and generally making my life a nightmare. And of course, they inspire confidence and gently guide me through this very complicated process. I couldn't decide between the subtle differences in the photos I took of Drs. Bowles and Patil. Either cool/pensive or unabashed good cheer. Which one do you like? They were in good spirits, though I get the sense they just gave me some bad news. The chromosomal tests on the bone marrow sample came back, and it turns out there is an abnormality in chromosome 7. I guess this is not favorable, and at this point a stem cell transplant will be in order at the end of chemo. The rest of the genetic testing is still in the works, and will t...

Mom came to visit today. She brought a ukulele for me to hack away at, and some cards for my barren wall. We walked around the 5th floor of the hospital and scouted out all the cleanest bathrooms. I believe we settled on 5A-157 as the best bathroom option. She also showed me her next gig outfit. Isn't she cute?  In other news, my left hand and knees are starting to swell. They might be overdoing it a little with all the fluids they're giving me. How much can one girl pee anyway? Actually I looked it up. Well, I looked up normal bladder sizes and urine outputs. And as you would imagine, my typical urine output is pretty much off the charts. The top line in my pee hat is 800 mL, and I pretty regularly go to about 900 mL. I'm guessing of course, because there's no line there. I asked if they make a pee hat for big-bladdered girls who pee a lot, but I guess they're one size fits all. Alas, what are all the big-bladdered girls like me to do?

I'm less than a week into this thing, but this cancer bullshit is lame and boring. I'm ready to move on. I'd like to think I have much better things to do with my time. I got my second dose of Idarubicin at about 11. This is what Idarubicin looks like going in, kind of like strawberry jam. At 12, I had my first wave of nausea. But Amie's spotify playlist is helping with that. I heard somewhere once that reggae is the best music for calming down a baby. I'm wondering if the same might be true of chemo patients. I got a bad headache this morning taking a shower. This might have been precipitated by the logic puzzle obstacle course involved in actually getting into the shower. Heart monitor came off, dressings got wrapped up, and I was ready to go. Then I realized that when you put on a t-shirt, and then get hooked up to an IV that can't be disconnected for a week, it's sort of tricky to take the t-shirt off. How do you think I did it? And what do you t...

Sorry, this one isn't about urine. It's about cerebrospinal fluid. I said before that the preliminary results from my lumbar puncture seemed to look good, meaning no blasts in there. Dr. Patil said the fluid was crystal clear, which is good news. But Drs. Patil and Bowles came by a bit ago to tell me further investigation was inconclusive. I guess the pathologist did see a small number of blasts in the sample. It's possible though that these blasts actually came from blood that was encountered as the needle was pulled out of the spinal column. The only way to know for sure of course is to do another lumbar puncture! Hooray! Sounds like this will happen Friday. And this next time they will draw out more fluid, using a few different vials. If there are more blasts in the first vial, or some in the first and none in the last, they can say more conclusively that my cerebrospinal fluid is clear. If they find that there are actually blasts in there, I will need Cytarabine ...

Went in for my baseline pulmonary function test just a bit ago. The tech's name was Zara, pronounced "Sara". I thought that was interesting. What was also interesting was the test itself. I had to breathe in and out through a mouthpiece as deep as I could. Then Zara took my lung capacity stats and compared them to the average/normal person of my gender and size. I think she said average was 3.9 L, and mine was 4.4 L. I'm basically a god.