During the summer of 2006 I began to have back pain that was generally not much more than a nuisance. But in mid-August it began to get much more serious and I finally decided I wasn’t going to get any better by taking more Advil.—MORE>


  
       
 

August 31, 2007…

One year ago today I had my first chemotherapy session.

The night before, Edna and I went to the grocery store to get some food for me to munch on during the treatment. I knew I was going to be stuck in the chair for eight hours with a needle in my arm, and we thought it might be good to have some foods that were easy to snack on. The doctor and the nurses had told me that I would have to eat quite a bit during chemo to keep my strength and weight on. We loaded up.—MORE>
 
       
       
 
 
       
 

This is my first update in a while. When people have asked how I was doing, my response has been that basically I’m getting a little better and a little stronger each day. That’s largely been true, though there have been some days that I’ve felt fairly lousy. One thing that has worried me is that my energy level has been completely unpredictable. I’ll feel pretty perky for a couple days, and then on a day when I’m not all that active I’ll be wiped out.—MORE>

 

  
       
 
My final chemotherapy treatment was December 14th. I thought this milestone was going to bring great relief to me, but I’ve found myself in an interesting mood where I’m not yet feeling terribly relieved. —MORE>
 
       
 
For all of you who have been asking about me (and I appreciate hearing from everyone) I must say that I’m not handling these last couple sessions of chemotherapy as well as I did the first three. I’ve been much more tired, and have had what I would call a general malaise even when I felt comparatively well. —MORE>

 

  
       
 

edna: The chemo sessions have made Thomas very poopy (tired, not the other way) and loopy. We tire of The Cancer.



  
       
 

Right after the scan I went home to visit my parents. For a while it was looking like they wouldn’t be doing much traveling while I was being treated and I had been eager to see them. Fortunately I was feeling good enough to go home to New Mexico and in fact during those few days I probably felt better than I had in months. —MORE>


[edna: The oncologist’s assistant called us with the PET scan results as we were transferring planes on our way to Albuquerque. Gobs of hugging occurred on the DFW moving walkway.]

 
 
       
 

This PET scan was not only important to see whether I was making progress against the lymphoma, but also the results would determine whether I entered into a clinical trial that would have put me on a much more aggressive therapy track. From an intellectual standpoint I was ready to do the trial, which would have meant spending time in the hospital and getting massive doses of chemotherapy and blood stem-cell transplants and general discomfort. That discomfort part wasn't very appealing to me, though. Not a big fan of discomfort.—MORE>


  
       
  One interesting thing I’ve noted about my chemotherapy is that each time I’ve been the first one in and the last one out. Because I get so many different drugs (and some of them take a few hours to drip in to my arm) I basically put in a full day. Other folks come in for as little as an hour, some for three or four, but at the end of the day I’m the only one still in the big easy chair.—MORE>  
       
       
 

What an eventful time this has been, considering that for much of it I’ve just been sitting around!

For the first 8–10 days after my first chemo session I was pretty well wiped out, energy-wise. I could walk around the house and stuff, but on some days even thinking about doing much more than that would wear me out. This second time I seem to have a bit more energy, and I think in part that’s because I knew what was coming. Again, though, naps are my friend. Why I stopped taking them when I was five I’ll never know.—MORE>

 
 
       
       
 

This one definitely qualified as the least fun procedure I’ve had to go through. Basically, a metal spike about seven inches long is pushed into your pelvis, and THEN the painful part begins, when they have to suck out some bone marrow. Fortunately, it is very quick and I had a very good doctor doing it who probably kept the pain to an absolute minimum. Check out the gallery of gory pictures! Edna took them, which is amazing because she’ s normally not much for looking at bloody stuff.

 

  
       
 

I have to admit, I was pretty scared the night before I began chemotherapy. All the information I’d seen about adverse reactions and nausea and weakness had me pretty unsure of what I was facing. But the oncology nurses, Anna and Jacqueline, were incredibly nice and they took great care of me. They even taught me how to give myself an injection that I had to do the next day. And I was fortunate enough not to have any serious problems from the drugs.— MORE>

 
 
       
       
 

The biopsy was done at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC), by a very nice surgeon named Dr. Fogel. I was hoping to have a really cool scar afterward, but he apparently did a pretty clean job and I’ve just got a thin line where the incision was rather than a bunch of stitches. This is a disappointment because Edna had promised to make a couple of bolts for my neck for Halloween so I could scare the neighbor kids.