Cycle #1 is done!

After a long afternoon at the hospital, the first cycle of chemo is done. Nick now has a prescription for Prilosec, which will hopefully help with the stomach pain he's been having off and on since the last dose. His white blood cell count was down quite a bit today-from 6.4 last time to 1.9 today. His oncologist said he likes to see the neutrophils, a component of the white count, above 500, but Nick's was under 500 today. We still went ahead with his treatment though. If his white counts continue to be this low, he'll have to begin injections between treatments to keep them up, so he doesn't get sick. His hematocrit was also a little low today, but his red blood cells and his hemoglobin were normal. His platelet count was also normal. Right now he is feeling OK, but not great. Hopefully the Prilosec will work for the stomach pain and the Zofran will work for the nausea and we'll have a good trip to Virginia for Chris and Stephanie's wedding.

Chemo #2 today

We left for Virginia for Christmas the day after the first chemo. Nick had a lot of trouble with stomach pains, but no real nausea. After a few days, he had swollen, painful lymph nodes in his neck and under his jaw. He couldn't eat anything but soup for several days because it hurt to swallow. He started feeling better around Christmas Eve. We had a great Christmas in Virginia with his family. On the 26th, we left the girls with his parents and drove to WV to meet my family for a few days of skiing. Nick was able to ski Monday and Tuesday without a problem and we had a great time! He felt pretty much normal, but did get a little more winded than usual. Now we are back in Cleveland and the second dose of chemo is this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we will fly back to Virginia for my brother's wedding. Hopefully Nick won't be feeling too bad!

Chemo #1 done!

The first chemo treatment is done. We got there at 2pm and the nurse gave Nick an IV and drew blood to check his blood counts, which were normal since he hadn't had any chemo yet. The nurse started the zofran (anti-nausea drug) through his IV. He had to have a test dose of the bleomycin to make sure he wasn't allergic to it. We had to wait an hour after that before he could get the bleo. In the meantime, the nurse gave him the adriamycin (IV push), the vinblastine (IV push) and the dacarbazine (IV drip-1 hour). He was then able to get the bleo (IV push). We left at about 5:30. The dacarbazine was a little uncomfortable going in, but other than that, he feels fine right now. We have a prescription for zofran and compazine. He'll take the zofran tonight and tomorrow and the compazine if he needs it, but hopefully he won't. It basically went pretty much as we expected. Dr. Koc stopped in to see us and he had one unexpected thing to say. He had presented Nick's case to the Lymphoma board, where the possibility of doing 6 cycles of ABVD without radiation was brought up. Apparently the success rates are pretty much the same for 4 cycles + radiation and 6 cycles without radiation. So now we have that to think over. We also got copies of his PET and CT scans. We'd been curious about the sizes of the tumors in his chest and also the size of the node removed from his neck. The node removed from his neck was 2.5x1.8x0.8 cm. The largest mass in his chest was 6x3.1cm. We'll have another update tomorrow about how he's feeling!

A week until chemo...

We are down to our last week before chemo. This week was for banking sperm, which is now done. Nick has his final exams this week. Next week he will be in the clinic all week and then he's scheduled for his first chemo at 2pm on Friday, 12/17. We are both excited to get started and nervous about what will happen.

We had our first visit with Nick's oncologist, Dr. Koc, today. The PET scan showed that he has stage IIA-non bulky disease. The stage II part means that he has tumors in both his chest and his neck, but not anywhere below the diaphragm, like the inguinal nodes or the liver or or spleen. The A means that he has no systemic symptoms, like fever, night sweats or weight loss. The non-bulky part means that the tumors in his chest are not too large. All of that is good news. He also had a bone marrow biopsy done, but the doctor told us that he really does not expect to find any cancer in the bone marrow. Dr. Koc told us that Hodgkins frequently starts in chest and then travels to the neck, so this is as good as we could have hoped, staging-wise. Treatment is 4 cycles of ABVD (chemotherapy) followed by radiation. Each cycle is 28 days long and he will receive the ABVD on days 1 and 15 of each cycle. His first chemo day is December 17.