3/21/2012
Well it’s time to just plain update on the
course of treatment – I left the reader hanging back at the Uniklinik. I was sprung on Sunday morning. I’ve tolerated this round (and by tolerated I
mean I haven’t been really yucky sick – I’ve been “successful” in 3 for 5
rounds of chemo so far!) well. Nausea
was managed at hospital and home, Monday I was a bit under the chemo fog but I
did manage to do a load of laundry in the morning and construct a meatloaf in
the afternoon – there have been worse days.
Tuesday the brain, what little is left, got into gear and I worked on
taxes for the morning and early afternoon – that’s U.S. taxes, Germany’s will
be later. Following this I set off for
blood tests and errands that took me through 2-7PM. At this point I was pretty much a spent
force. Today it’s back to taxes and
errands and laundry. The weather is gorgeous
but I need to keep myself pretty shaded, chemo tends to invite sunburn and
trading lymphoma for melanoma doesn’t sound like too good an idea. I did get the bedding washed and on the line
to take advantage of the weather while there was no springtime tang of freshly
manured fields in the air. It’s not a
smell that bothers me, but I don’t want to sleep with it.
I’m scheduled for round 2 of 2 chemos that
precede my stem cell harvesting tentatively to start on Good Friday – so it’s
Easter weekend in the hospital. Should
be quiet. After the treatment comes the
harvest - there is a period of about ten days when all this goes on. Following this will be the long stay of
approximately three weeks. High dose
chemo will be administered hopefully wiping out any remaining vestiges of
lymphomac nastiness. I’ll have virtually
no immunity at that time. Once stem
cells are reintroduced the hope is the blood will rebuild – red, white and
platelet wise and I could be “cured” (I guess that’s measured in levels of
remission and a bit of looking over your shoulders for a few years to see if
there’s a return). It looks likely that
late May will wind this up, Lord willing.
It would be great to have all this plotted
precisely on a calendar. At that point I
could “plan” stuff. One of the great
lessons of all this experience is but a reinforcement of a very old truth about
the plans of mankind versus the plans and intentions of God. One of these plan sets is vapor, the other is
sure. Figure it out.
So that’s just a quick update on where we’re
at. Continue to pray for effectiveness
of treatment. Continue to pray for Diane
as she is so involved with her work in TeachBeyond’s Language Services and
related responsibilities at the same time she is a most precious partner in all
the other “stuff”.
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