I’m going back to the hospital tomorrow morning. I’m only visiting, but, after three solid months, it’s getting tiresome. It’s become a crappy routine. Arrive, check in, wait for a chair, try to get comfortable, have a needle inserted into your hand and then sit for five or six hours while some sort of drug is dripped into your bloodstream.
Tomorrow, it’s only my monthly dose of gamma globulin – antibodies harvested from thousands of donors meant to replace those that my body can’t produce anymore. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be back for another dose of Rituxan (a man-made genetically altered antibody that tags cancer cells in order to give my own immune system a fighting chance. That’s followed by an anti-nausea medication before I’m hooked up to the main event – a nice little concoction named bedamustine, trade-named Treanda.
It’s a nasty little chemical that comes in a plastic bag covered with another plastic bag thickly coated with a dark material to keep the light off it. Bedamustine has been used on cancer patients for about 60 years. It works by damaging the DNA of CLL cells triggering something called “programmed cell death.” It can work wonders, but unfortunately it not only kills cancer cells, it targets any cell that’s in the process of dividing – like skin cells, hair cells, the cells lining the digestive system and, here it comes, the cells of the immune system and those in the bone marrow that produce blood. My marrow is screwed up enough thank you. This year alone, I’ve needed eight blood transfusions to keep me alive.
Treanda, like all the chemo drugs in it’s class, is made from mustard gas, the favorite chemical warfare weapon of World War I. The chemo drug was invented by an Australian wool chemist who stumbled on it while trying to take the kinks out of wool fiber.
Compared to its cousins, bedamustine is pretty mild when it comes to side effects, or at least that’s what I’m told. My first experience with it was a disaster, but that’s another story (described with some detail in earlier posts here). A few weeks ago, I got a slightly reduced dose during round two a few weeks ago and didn’t feel a thing. The next round is during the first week in June and then I’ll have another dose before July 4th.
The good part is that by all accounts, it’s working and working well.
Many of my swollen lymph nodes have disappeared entirely, including, apparently, the one that was blocking the lymphatic system in my left leg and preventing a infected wound from healing. Two months after beginning treatment, the wound is almost 80 percent healed.
That fact, plus all the other good news – 120 pounds lost, diabetes gone and the apparent successful battle against my blood cancer -- adds up to a healthier Marc than we’ve seen in some time. I should be very happy and confident.
So how come that’s not the case? Since my brush with death six weeks ago, I’ve been tense and anxious at times. I can’t seem to shake it. My psychiatrist says it’s normal considering what I’ve been through. But knowing that it’s normal doesn’t help.
I WANT MY MOJO BACK!
If my theory is correct, and it is, the proper attitude is absolutely necessary to successfully fighting cancer. I had it, but now I know that I’ve lost it. But I’m going to try hard to get it back. I need to laugh damn it! I need to not worry about catching the flu. I need to relax and lose this feeling that’s following me around like a dark cloud.
I appeal to my friends to let me know of any way of inducing smiles that I might have not dreamed up. In the meantime, I you spot someone walking down the street with a stupid fake smile on his face, it might just be me. Sorry.
In the meantime, here’s something I spotted on the web that did make me smile. It’s a promo that Ch. 2 made about Marcia that I’ve never seen before. As a matter of fact, when I showed it to Marcia, she had never seen it either. Enjoy!
