12/1/96
It has been a strange week, for I spent most of it being nauseous and heavily drugged up. All four of my anti-nausea drugs have the same "may cause drowsiness" label on the bottle, and they have a synergistic effect, so much so, that I am no longer able to drive safely. So now I get rides to the hospital, and that will continue for the rest of my six abdomen treatments. Then I will get almost a week off to rest up for my last body part to be treated! I can hardly believe it!

12/8/96
I am feeling semi-human today. Nausea and the lack of energy still hover over me, but that is OK, because I only have one more abdomen treatment to get through. Then, the very next day, I get to start my pelvis zapping, and the count down to the end of this long year and 4 days of treatments shall finally end on January 9th. I was hoping that I would be done on the 5th, which would fall on the anniversary of my first day of chemo. I didn't want to contaminate the year 1997, but I will get over it!

My new friend Stephania, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkins, just started her Hodgkin's treatments last week, so she is just now feeling her first effects of chemo. It is such a rude awakening to learn just how bad you are going to feel, and it seems like an unendurable endless road. There is nothing I can tell her to candy coat the experience, all I can do was tell her she will need to be tough and positive, and that it will end. It is important to envision an end to it all, to a new treatment-free future, for the end of the tunnel comes easier if you can already see the light. It is kind of like the will to live, bodies are smart and know just how hard they should fight for your survival. Of course, when you are going through the treatment, it is easy to get caught up in the moment and dwell on that crappy feeling. Those times are unavoidable, and all you can do is get through them and tell yourself it will not last forever. Hair grows back, skin heals, nausea diminishes, time passes, and that elusive light does appear. I am proof of that!

On a more medical note, my blood counts have been holding up fairly well. During the last two weeks my WBC's were 4,100 and 3,600, my RBC's were 11.6 and 11.1, but my platelets have been low all along at 124 and 120. I have no platelet visualization, but I think I have the beginning of one being created in my head somewhere. I can't help but see them as little plates spinning around, but now I need to get them to multiply. Also, I tried to create a visualization for nausea, and I found that thinking about being in the fresh air helped the most. So now, during treatment, I think about sitting on a dock on a lake called "Egg Lake," with the wind blowing hard enough to make the lily pads lift up among thousands of tiny waves. It is right near my sister's house, and I plan to visit it this summer. I owe it a lot!

Soon all my nausea will be gone, the skin on the middle of my back won't be burned, my pelvic radiation will be done, I will be re-staged, and the word "remission" shall be used in a sentence with my name! Ha!

12/13/96
This week has been good and bad, and I have to start with the bad first. My friend Joe died on Sunday, he had the same diagnosis as I did, Hodgkin's 4B with bone marrow involvement. We were epals since March, we hit it off right away and we even made plans to meet one day in the future. I had been trying to call him on the phone, but I got no answer for over a month. I had a bad feeling about it, and I wished I had tried to call earlier. I never had the chance to hear his voice, see a picture of him, or meet him in person, but I still feel just as sad as I would if I had. I posted his story on my site soon after we became friends, and he sent me updates as he went through a bone marrow transplant and his second relapse. I wanted his story to have a happy ending, but I am finding that making friends with cancer patients is risky business. Having my friends die is not something that I am used to, it feels like a big slap in the face. All I I can do for Joe now is keep his story alive on my site, and somehow I think that Joe can still appreciate it. Here is a short cut to Joe's Story. I just updated his story with information about his last days, a sort of memorial.

As of today, I have 16 more pelvic treatments to go. That is a good thing, even though my blood counts are on the decline. My WBCs were 2,200, RBCs (hemoglobin) stayed steady at 11.1, but my platelets dropped to 82. Dr. Knox said that she will allow my platelets to go to between 60 and 70 before she requests a break for me. She said that it is not a danger until my platelets drop to 20, and she promised that she will not let anything bad happen to me. So now I will be getting blood tests every other day, for my counts could drop that fast and I may need a break to allow them to recover. My job is to visualize this week-end, and then I can surprise everyone with my rising counts on Monday. I will do my best!

I also saw Dr. Cooney today, and he was happy to see me. He told me that I will be re-staged 4 to 6 weeks after my last treatment, and then he can finally tell me I am in remission. Then I will get my port removed and I will begin a routine of being tested for colon, ovarian and breast cancer. I feel relieved to know that I will have all these preventative tests for the rest of my life. I will never be caught with an advanced stage of anything again, it makes me feel lucky and safe. I do realize that I never want another cancer, but if I should get one, I will catch it before it travels every inch of my body. I will also go to the melanoma clinic, for I have many freckles and tiny moles that I cannot possibly keep track of myself. It is something I should have been doing ever since I had a melanoma removed from my shoulder ten years ago. Lastly, Dr. Cooney put me on thyroid pills, for the chest radiation has been slowly reducing the function of my thyroid. I will take them for the rest of my life. My new doctors are making up for the ones who misdiagnosed me for two years, I am grateful.

About my never-ending nausea, it is subsiding, the worst is over. Now I get to experience diarrhea, but it is OK, because the countdown has begun and soon I will be able to start a fresh new life. And that is better than good!

12/18/96
I am coming back to life! I am a whole lot less nauseated, and I only take one Zophran a day now. My world has stopped shrinking, I have some energy back, and I can eat again. I think it is due to a combination of things, the first being the end of abdomen radiation, the second being that my upper body is beginning to recover, and thirdly I think that the Thyroid medication I am taking has begun to return my metabolism back to normal. Ironically, I am on a two day break from pelvic radiation due to my platelets dropping to 64. On Monday I was actually treated with my platelets that low, for we forgot to run my blood work STAT. Oops, but at least it gives me a good reason to do my new platelet visualizations where a Cloud Blort squeezes bone marrow until small spinning red platelets fly out of the marrow like bubbles from a bubble machine. The other visualization has a spinning disk that spins so fast that pieces of it fly out and turn into platelets. I will illustrate them somewhere down the line, for now I need some rest.

12/21/96
I am still on a break from treatment due to plummeting platelets, down to 42 on Thursday. I am supposed to watch out for red splotches on my skin, especially my ankles, for that will be a sign that my platelets have gone to the dangerous 20 mark. If I should see those spots, I would then go to the hospital for a nice platelet transfusion. I am having to rethink my platelet visualizations, for they need more accuracy to really work. They are clear, not red, and they break off of another type of cell, so I will be spending some time perfecting that image. I predict that on Monday I will have a platelet level of 92. I think they are already on the rise!

12/25/96
It is Christmas, and I already got my present this year, I am alive. It is an important day because this time last year I was exploding with at least twenty pounds of cancer in my body. One of my sister's said I looked like a chipmunk, and she thought my skin was going to burst. This year I feel a million times better! I am tired, but it does not matter. It is nice to not be going out of my head thinking I must be the most stressed out person in the world. It makes me realize what a long year it has been, and how glad I am that it is almost over. It was a very calm Christmas. I spent it at my parents house with most of my family. We had roast beef, and it was bloody rare on the inside just the way I craved it. I have craved rare red meat and liver for weeks, for I crave blood. I need blood. I had a little trouble eating as much as my mind wanted me too, but the good part is that I can still imagine how good it was. I can also recall perfectly how good the liver my sister made for me was, and the patte she made out of it too. It is really fun to eat liver and beef when your blood volume is low. I think it must be what a vampire feels like.

12/28/96
My platelet levels have been hovering in the close-to-dangerous zone all week. The danger level is 20 and mine were 25 on Monday, 27 on Tuesday, 22 on Thursday, and finally they hit the danger zone at 18 on Friday. I also woke up with a fever of 101 on Friday, and when I walked down the long halls to the blood lab, I got very winded and my lungs felt sore. I had to lean against the inside of the lab door to catch my breath. Once they got my blood, I went straight to the radiation unit to see Dr. Knox. She was standing right there, so I was able to get immediate attention. She sent me to get a quick chest Xray, and then I headed back to radiation for the results. When I got there, my mom and sister were waiting there too. It took a while, but the doctors finally decided what to do with me since my WBCs, Hemoglobin and platelets had all dropped to the danger level. They ended up admitting me to the ATU, first they gave me a nice blood culture from my arm and my port, then they typed and crossed my blood, then they gave me a shot of neupogen to increase my low WBC count, and finally at about 7PM I got my first bag of blood. I felt safe.

The on-call doctor, Dr. Wilson, decided that I should not have a platelet transfusion until I hit the 10 mark, for he wanted me to see me make them on my own. He ended up being right, because my platelets turned around and went up this morning to 37. My next blood test will be on Monday, and my platelets have got to be going up. I am visualizing bone marrow in my non-radiated parts activating themselves and making platelets. It is time I get back into some serious visualizing. I must focus my brain! Focus, focus, focus! I cannot let my brain fizz-out.

There is something kind of comical (at least to me) that happened this week, it was with my new friend Stephania who is now on her forth week of chemo. She was going to come to my parent's house on Christmas, but she ended up in the hospital with a possible infection. The next day I went with her to her doctor's appointment, and the next day I planned to be there for her during her treatment. Of course that day was Friday, the day I was admitted into the hospital. So Stephania came to see me instead after her treatment, and when she did, she began to feel tired and hot and sick. So she lay down on the other hospital bed, and within twenty minutes she got a fever and chills. She ended up being admitted in the same room as me. She got an IV of antibiotics while I got my blood. It is pretty amazing that she took the IV, for she is needle phobic. She uses something called Emla cream to numb the injection area, and then she always has the nurse use a small needle. She goes through hell every time she has anything done with a needle, it is a very real fear. I know how she feels, for I am a baby when it comes to the bone marrow extractions. She has to be extra brave to get through all her treatments, so she is a lot braver than she knows. Regardless of all that, we did have some fun in there too, we posed for a lot of unchemo-like pictures. The entire evening was kind of funny, like a traumatic party with needles and blood, drugs, bad food, and guests that were doctors and nurses. We definitely had the most entertaining room on the floor.

12/29/96
This morning I woke up in a sweat with a fever of 101.3, so I knew something was wrong. I have been on fever watch because of my transfusion, so I thought the fever was from my new blood. Then I noticed strange red bumps on my right side, and they did not look like any bumps I had ever had before. So I called my second home, the hospital, and talked to Dr. Wilson. The first thing he said was that he thought it might be shingles and I had to come into the ATU to be checked. So I went right to the hospital and saw Dr. Wilson for a few seconds before he told me I had shingles. The good news is that I am the earliest case he has ever see, so I guess you could say I have infant shingles. I still have a bit of a fever, but they don't hurt or itch like I have heard they can. I somehow think that I got my anti-viral medicine in me so soon that I will have a short painless case of it. I refuse to itch or be in pain or let this disease slap me around much longer! I am too close to the end! I am winning!

Shingles are caused by the chicken pox virus that hides in your nerves, and comes out when one's immune system is down. So I have some odd questions to ask which ever doctor I see first tomorrow. First of all, during my transfusion, if the blood I got was from someone who had active chicken pox, could I have gotten my shingles from it, especially since I also had a low WBC count? And, if I come into contact with someone who has never had Chicken pox, could they get it from me while I have active shingles?

Besides all that, I am still hoping for more platelets. Lots and lots of platelets. I wonder if the shingles will change my counts tomorrow? I will be getting another blood test in the morning, and I pretty sure my counts will be on the upswing. The Neupogen already got my WBCs to 5,300 on Saturday, and the transfusion put my hemoglobin to 9.5, and my platelets went up to 37 all by themselves. I have a lot to tell Dr. Knox and Dr. Marquez next time I see them, and I will have tons to tell Dr. cooney in a few weeks. It has been an eventful week, and I don't think I could count the number of blood tests I have had over the last fourteen days. Christmas day was my only day off. That was a plus!