Halfway Home

I had my third treatment last Tuesday, which puts me at the midway point. Three down, three to go!

So far, my doctor says I am tolerating and responding to the treatments very well. But I don't know how much they can tell about the efficacy of the chemo. The day before each treatment, they do blood work and a brief physical examine, looking for unwanted lumps/bumps. They haven't found any, which is great, but I guess I won't know what's really going on inside until the CT Scan, which is scheduled for March 30.

Mind you, the "brief physical examine" is still pretty thorough. It involves my doctor trying to find and size up internal organs and lymph nodes by gouging and poking her fingers into my gut. And as she's rummaging around in there, poking and pressing, she asks "does this hurt?" Ummm, well, I guess it hurts as much as expected considering you're squeezing my spleen?? She thought that was pretty funny. I think the idea is that they're looking for a clear shriek of pain or wincing as they push and prod your innards. If you have to stop and think about it to evaluate the level of pain/discomfort... then you're probably fine.

One new development is that my fingertips have become extremely sensitive. It's a common side effect of one of the chemo drugs. Most often, your fingers and feet go numb, sometimes to the point of losing mobility/functionality. For me, it's just hyper-sensitivity, especially to hot and cold. As I told my friend Byron, I would be really good at reading braille right now. He of course, wanted me to try more nefarious things like cracking a safe.

My white blood cells are recovering and reproducing themselves so well that I only need to do two (instead of three) GCSF injections this round! Good. I don't like that part very much, so the fewer the better for sure.

So as I "make the turn" and head down the back 9, I hope I continue to feel good and avoid the major hazards (uuuugggh I miss playing golf so I'll just make really bad analogies). Hopefully the last three chemotherapy treatments will go as well as the first three. I'll continue to think positively and please, keep the emails coming - I love hearing from everyone.