Chemo Round One = Complete

Hello all,

Sorry I've been quiet of late.  I know many of you have been eager to get an update about what's going on so let's get to it.

The big news is that round one of the three rounds that I have to go through is effectively over.  I've got a follow-up with my oncologist tomorrow morning to run through what I can only imagine is like what happens between the first and second period of a hockey game.  "Way to check that guy, Cronshaw.  He's gonna be gunning for you the rest of the night so don't be stupid and get five in the box."   Okay, so maybe not exactly like hockey...   What I'll be able to say is that I feel surprisingly good and I'm ready to hit the ice...or the infusion suite, as it were.

Week one was tough, as you all can surmise.  It took 40% of my energy and basically grayed out most of the world.  Food started to taste different and even plain old tap water tasted bad for a time.  Week two was supposed to be simple with just a 10 minute infusion of bleomycin that can make you feel a bit like you have the flu.   Well, it gave me a massive dose of chills, a fever and basically ruined my Tuesday.  I bounced back after a couple of days and had a nice weekend with Abby; we even made it for a day trip to Annapolis, MD.  This week included another bleo dose and it wasn't even one third as unpleasant as week two's dose and I was back to work the next day.  Throughout, folks from my office and from Abby's have been bringing us dinners and surprising us with collectively organized gifts and well wishes.  We are both so grateful for your support and for the tasty grub.

People say that chemo ruins your favorite foods and based on my week one experience, I get that.  Fortunately, the last ten days have felt like a bonanza and I've been tearing through food like Joey Chestnut.  From spicy Indian gobi to big bowls of pasta, I've been an eating machine.  I am 100% convinced that Thai chilies have cancer-killing properties so I'm chowing down on those whenever possible.  Oh, and let's not forget dessert!  A special shout-out to my aunt Nikki who brought a Christmas cake over from England back in July.  I asked for it as a joke (the thing must have weighed 6 pounds), but she baked it and carted it over.   I am enjoying the treat even if it's nowhere near Xmas - thanks Nik, it's brilliant as is all of your baking.

Now, it's not all coming up roses.   My hair has started to fall out and we're way past Rogaine now.  This morning I woke up to about 300 hairs on my pillow.   I expected this, but I still stared at it in disbelief.   I'll get some pics up at some point, but for now I'm rocking the Keanu Reeves look from Speed.   I'm guessing I'll be Bruce Willis in about a week.  I'm also keenly aware that on Monday I go back to the hospital for my "on week" where I'll be there Mon-Fri from about 8am to 4pm getting a massive dose of noxious chemicals pumped into me.   It's unnerving to see the nurses put on a gown and gloves just to HANDLE these drugs and I'm getting them mainlined into my body.   I will almost certainly feel worse a week from today, but I'll be a week closer to the end of the war.   Still, as my main man (or he will be if we ever meet) Adam Richman might say, "In the battle of man versus cancer - in this round, man won!"

Okay, I've exceeded my word limit on this one, but I hope you've enjoyed this update.   Keep the emails and Facebook comments coming - even if it's just a few words.

Cheers,

Dom

Day Five Begins

Chemotherapy regimens differ depending on the type of cancer that one has and a multitude of other factors.  With the pure seminoma cancer that I have, my medical team put together a three cycle course over nine weeks.  Each cycle is the same with the first week in the outpatient infusion suite at Georgetown University Hospital where I sit in a comfy chair and get various bags of fluids and meds pumped into me for about seven hours each day.  Weeks two and three require just a single shot on the Tuesday which takes about an hour and then the next cycle starts in week four.

Each patient handles the treatment differently and from what I can tell, I'm doing as well or better than most.  The biggest impact has been on my energy level.   Imagine that you've got five power packs getting you through your day and you sleep and eat to recharge them after you draw them down during the day.  I feel as if two days of chemo robbed me of one pack and the third day took another so I'm down to three of five packs.  I walk more slowly and my affect is notably more muted.

People also talk about "chemo brain" wherein a patient will become a bit scatterbrained and/or forgetful.  I'm beginning to understand that a bit as I notice myself thinking more slowly and I'm not able to "execute" mental processing at the same rate as normal.   Abby asked me yesterday what I wanted to watch on TV here at the hospital and I really didn't care because my attention span was only about five minutes.

Nausea is also pretty common, but I've been lucky to avoid most of it.   My appetite has fallen off and I'm enjoying graham crackers, the odd bit of soup and fresh juice out of the juicer that my father bought me for my birthday this year.   As it turns out, you can juice kale and it's pretty good.   Add in the powerhouse drugs like Zofran and I'm hoping to keep the nausea at bay.

So, that all sounds rough, but I'm doing okay.   I stare at my IV and think of all of the noxious chemicals that pass through it and I can only smile at the reality that I'm so thankful for them.  You never think you'd ask someone to lop off one of your testicles, but I did.   I never thought I'd be so humbled by the millions who have traveled this road before me and the billions spent on cancer research so that I could sit here and be okay.  It was not always this easy.

All of that said, I'm doing pretty darned well.   I'm reminded of that every single morning when I listen to what's happening in Pakistan or think about the recently departed Vlad Bochkov (I hope to see my MSB folk at the service tomorrow).   Your messages of encouragement and emails mean a lot and with one week nearly down, my spirits are high.  I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and don't forget to do something nice for someone today.

Cheers,

Dom

One Of These Nuts Is Not Like The Other!

I have cancer.  Me.  I did not expect that when I went in to the student health center at Georgetown University back in April.  I want to tell you about my experience - some of it will not be easy reading and I will try to warn you about those bits.  Quite a bit has transpired since April, but in retelling the stories I will try to be brief.   I will keep most blog posts to 400 words or less and I hope you'll forgive this first post being a bit longer.

So, the story starts in April.   I was one month away from graduating from the MBA program at Georgetown, hard on the job hunt and continuing to help in the planning of my upcoming wedding.  One morning, I noticed that my left testicle had nearly doubled in size - there's a whole post coming later about the importance of doing monthly self exams - and I made an appointment to see someone about it.  I had a bacterial infection and so I was given antibiotics and when they didn't work, I was sent over to the urology department at the main hospital where I was treated to an exam and given an order for a CT scan to get more clarity about what the mass in my testicle was.   After the CT came back with enough imagery to be suspicious, I was given a different antibiotic and eventually another CT scan.   They also drew blood to look for chemical indicators of cancers called tumor markers.   Waiting for the phone calls for the results of those tests included some very long days.

When the news came, it wasn't great.  What I had was likely cancer and we wouldn't know until they got the mass to pathology; it could be seminoma (very good prognosis - 98% cure rate) or non-seminoma (less good prognosis).  Interestingly, biopsies are not typically done for testicular masses because they are almost always something that needs to be removed anyway so rather than subject patients to two surgeries, they simply remove the testicle.   "Whoa," I thought, "I'm going to be kind of like Lance Armstrong."

I don't think Lance heard news and decided to bring his friends in on it by inviting 30 people to a happy hour, but I did.   A bunch of my friends and Abby's co-workers got together to say goodbye to my left nut.   I said that I would buy the first drink for the person who made the best/most inappropriate joke about it; he didn't make it to the happy hour so I still owe Erfaan one when he gets back from Tanzania.

So, out came my left testicle.  The surgery went smoothly, the cancer turned out to be a seminoma and the pathology report looked good enough that the surgeon was hopeful that my dance with cancer was over.  Turns out that he was wrong.  A few weeks before our wedding, we met with an oncologist at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown hoping to hear the "all clear" of the CT after surgery.   Instead, they found suspicious masses in my lungs and nodes in my groin and retroperitoneaum (near the kidneys).   The oncologist was pretty sure that this was additional cancer, but he gave us the freedom to have our wedding, go on our honeymoon to Greece and come back for another CT after we returned.  If the CT was clear, then the plan was to monitor through additional CT scans and blood work every few months, if not then I would be headed for chemotherapy.  I remained cautiously pessimistic and starting preparing for chemo as I ate Greek salads and drank Ouzo.

Last week on Monday, I went for the followup CT in the morning and during the afternoon followup Abby and I got word that I was headed for nine weeks of chemo starting the following Monday.  That was today, the day before my 32nd birthday and I spent it in bay seven of the Georgetown outpatient infusion center.

So there's the short version of this tale.  I've taken a bit of an unorthodox approach to this whole journey, but I think that there's value in making this experience somewhat public.  I hope that this blog gives you the updates that you're looking for, makes you smile a bit and brings us closer together.   Sadly, none of you can cure cancer, but you can send a quick note of support or make fun of me when I lose my hair.   It's time for a fight folks, but I'm ready and with a 98% cure rate - I'm going to win.   Thanks for being in my corner.

Cheers,

Dom