News! Breaking! Broken News!
More labs and an Oncology meeting this morning and now we have next steps. I am very very very lucky, as is obvious to anyone paying even the the most cursory attention to this whole mess, but I am not so lucky that I get to just walk away after surgery. They still want to mop up any microscopic little fuckers in there that are lodging themselves in all my soft comfy organs, and that means back on the chemo train. No surprise at all, it was just a matter of asking when and how much.
Initial schedule is 7 more cycles of FOLFIRINOX to make a total of 12 along with the pre-surgery run. I will start next week. At some point around cycles 3 or 4 they will scan me again, and mmmmaaaaaaaybe if my body continues to be super-rad at chemo and my cancer continues to be super-bad at surviving I can end early, but most likely I will be getting beat up by the drugs until mid-March.
The part that sucks, is chemo. I know what it feels like, and I am not looking forward to going through it anymore, especially in winter when the cold sensitivity and neuropathy are going to be that much worse. I am not super happy about 7 cycles, after learning what 5 did to me previously. I am also 100% committed to doing whatever it takes to give myself the best chance to still be alive in 5 years, and this bullshit is what it takes.
The part that rocks, is I know a lot more of what to expect from chemo and how to manage the side-effects. I am not pretending I am so good at the process that chemo is no big deal. The shadow of the deal blocks out the sun of my psyche and makes me extremely apprehensive. I am going into it with a lot more information than I had the first time around though, and I also have the experience of what it feels like to recover from chemo for a couple months, which is such a relief. I have this idea of what I think I *should* feel like in May, only next time I am past chemo I probably won’t have major surgery a few weeks in and spend half of it feeling some of the worst pain of my life. I will just be happy to ride a bike and eat ice cream. Maybe take my shirt off at the RW24 sign up and gross everyone out.
Anyway, them’s the rumors for today. Tomorrow is tomorrow, like always.
Happy Monday!