No more hair

Nick got tired of all the shedding and shaved his head on Friday. His hair was pretty short before, but now it's gone. Luckily, he doesn't have any funny bumps on his head or anything, so he doesn't look too bad. I guess I should get a picture of it. This week has been interesting. The first day after chemo, Tuesday, wasn't too bad and Nick spent all day at school. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, he spent most of the day at home and slept a lot. By Sunday, he was feeling pretty close to normal. Since we have a few extra days between treatments this time, he'll have close to 2 weeks of feeling good before it starts over again.

Got treatment #3 done

We went in yesterday for the second try of treatment #3, the first treatment of the second cycle. His ANC was 440, above Dr. Koc's cutoff of 350, so he got the treatment yesterday. To get us back on a Friday schedule to help decrease missed school days, there will be 18 days instead of 14 before his next treatment, which will be on 2/4. The treatment went fine and we found out that the chemo nurse he had yesterday has a brother that lives in the same small town in rural Virginia that I grew up in-small world. He was feeling OK last night, but fairly nauseated this morning. He went to school though and it is mid-afternoon and he isn't home yet, so he must be doing OK. Either that, or he had an important patient whose appointment he didn't want to cancel. Nick is scheduled for his mid-treatment PET scan on 2/4. When we talked with Dr. Koc on Friday, he brought up a few possibilities for the rest of Nick's treatment. He said that if this PET scan is completely clear, we can talk about the possibility of doing only 4 cycles of chemo and no radiation. He's also talked about 4 cycles of chemo with involved field radiation and 6 cycles of chemo without radiation in the past, so it looks like there are 3 choices. After doing research on the long term side effects of the chemo and the radiation and the overall and event-free survival rates of combined modality therapy (chemo + radiation) and chemo alone, we are leaning towards no radiation, but we'll have to see what the midway scan shows and talk it over with the doctors. Only two months later, I am already realizing how naive the last sentence of the first entry of this journal was. I said, "Hopefully in a year or two, we'll be looking back on this time and saying, "Remember when..."" HA! I can already see how this will change things forever. I can only imagine the stress that post-treatment scans will bring, imagining that the scans will show relapse rather than the continued remission that we hope for. I know that any time Nick feels anything slightly odd, we'll panic about recurrence. At this point, I don't see how we can ever go back to normal life and not be paranoid about cancer. Being paranoid about cancer IS our normal life now.

Chemo postponed

Nick was supposed to have his third chemo yesterday. His parents and brother are here visiting from Virginia for Anna's 4th birthday (also yesterday) and his mom came to the appointment with us. His absolute neutrophil count was only 120 today-way, way too low for chemo. A normal ANC is over 2500. So we have to go back on Monday. Hopefully, it will be high enough then to do the chemo. In the meantime, Nick is very suseptible to infection. I think he'll be staying in this weekend. No shopping and no church.

A new med and hair loss

Nick continued to have stomach pains off and on after the last chemo, especially after eating some ribs (big surprise!), so he now is also on Reglan to try to control that. And the hair loss has begun! For about the past week, his hair has been thinning. Someone who didn't know him wouldn't think that it looked thin, but I can tell and so can he. When I take a pinch of hair and pull, I end up with a hair or two and he can't feel it come out at all. Luckily his hair is very short, so unless he starts getting patchy spots, he won't have to worry about it. The third chemo is on Friday, Anna's 4th birthday. He also has an appointment with the oncologist and with a nutritionist that day.

Back from Virginia

We are back from our whirlwind trip to Virginia. Nick has his second chemo treatment on Thruday afternoon. On Friday morning, we had to get up at 4am to catch our 6:15 flight. We got into to Roanoke around 9:45. The rehearsal was that afternoon, so we didn't have much time to rest. Nick was a groomsman and Anna and Leah were flowergirls. After the rehearsal, there was the rehearsal dinner and then a New Year's Eve party at my parents' house. Nick and the girls slept through the whole party. The wedding and reception were on New Years Day. Nick made it through, but he was very tired by the end. Then we got up at 7am this morning and had a flight at 10:15. We finally got back to our house around 3:15 this afternoon. The prilosec has really helped Nick's stomach pain this time around. His nausea has been slightly worse, but not too bad. The jaw pain and throat pain have started up again, so he is back to eating just soup. He feels pretty run down right now. If the last time is anything to go by, he should begin feeling better by Thursday. Then hopefully he'll have a good week before it starts all over again.