Begin chemo next week

Last week was easily the most difficult week since I began daily radiation treatments three weeks ago. The debilitating fatigue and the violent coughing spells are really hard to deal with. But I’ve whined enough about those in previous blog entries, so I’ll move on.

This coming week is going to be busy. Here’s the schedule:

• Monday – get a port installed that will be used to administer chemo treatments, get my final radiation treatment, go to our favorite restaurant to celebrate the end of radiation!
• Tuesday – get my first chemo treatment (Taxol and Carboplatin)
• Wednesday – get a COVID-19 test required prior to Friday’s Gamma Knife procedure, see one of my two oncologists
• Thursday – sleep in and do nothing!!
• Friday – show up at 5:00 am (ugh!) to get the gamma knife procedure on the metastatic lesion in my brain.

I’m a bit uneasy about starting chemo the day after ending radiation, without giving my body any time to recover from the side effects of radiation before it gets hit with the toxic chemo drugs. But I understand the oncologists’ concern that I need to start hitting the metastatic lesions in my lungs, liver, and rib with chemo ASAP, so that’s what I’ll do.

Chemo works by targeting rapidly dividing cells throughout the body and preventing them from dividing. Cancer cells divide rapidly but so do hair follicles, cells lining the gut, and bone marrow. That’s why chemo patients often experience hair loss, nausea and vomiting, constipation or diarrhea, bone pain, etc.

Before the chemo drugs are administered Tuesday, I’ll receive medicines to help prevent the nausea and vomiting. And my doctor prescribed three meds to use at home if necessary. So the gut issues shouldn’t be much of a problem. But they say I will definitely lose all the hair on my head in 2-3 weeks. I’ve been cautioned that that can be very traumatic, even for a guy, but somehow that just doesn’t concern me. In fact, I’m kind of curious to see how I look bald. And I have enough baseball caps to use in public if I feel the need to.

I ran across the following this evening and I believe there’s a lot of wisdom here: “You lose the battle to cancer if you have the woe is me attitude even if you live through it. I’ve met courageous Christians who have beaten cancer and have more joy in Christ than ever. I’ve also met courageous Christians who beat cancer even though God has brought them home from it. You can waste your cancer by not seeing the beauty of it. You can waste it by not using it to get closer to Christ. You can waste it by not being an inspiration and testimony to others. You can also waste it by not having a new affection for God’s Word.”