With the diagnosis in place, we turned immediately to the next question: How do we kick cancer’s butt? The diagnosis itself was a whirlwind of terminology that my brain just wasn’t ready for, so I figured the treatment plan would be more of the same. Fortunately, it’s a pretty simple plan on the surface: Chemo to get the cancer in check, then a stem cell bone marrow transplant to get Healy bone marrow and remission.
At this stage, I was still by my perceptions of medical terms and stuff you see and hear on the medical shows on TV. I’d thought that getting a blood transfusion (which I needed two of because of my anemic state) was being hooked up to some blood machine with centrifuges and stuff from Dexter’s Lab. I was surprised to learn it’s just an IV drip from a blood bag. So the term “chemo” made me think that treatments involved being hooked up to some crazy machine and automatically meant puking and alopecia.
Chemo has more variants, methods, and levels than I could have ever imagined. Some chemo is delivered via pills, some via ports, some are lighter than others, not all chemo makes you lose your hair… there’s so much to it! In my case, the first part of the plan is to do four cycles (months) of weekly treatments involving a three-drug attack. This is typical for Multiple Myeloma treatment, and there are a few different trio options. For me, since this cancer impacted my kidney health,
My trio was Velcade (Bortezomib), Dexamethasone (a steroid), and Cytoxan (Cyclophosphamide). The first of these I’m having delivered via a subcutaneous injection, which is just a tiny needle under the skin of the belly. The rest are all pills… lots of them. 24 total, plus the Valtrex that I have to take as a precautionary med every 48 hours (another standard treatment step). It’s just once a week, so it’s not bad.
I’ve tolerated this regiment well enough. Treatments and pills are on Tuesday . The effects seemed to do their most the following Wednesday through Friday, although I know that doing dialysis on Wednesday and Friday played a significant part as well. The nausea sucked, and I really had to learn to manage my energy from the effects of fatigue caused by both the chemo and the dialysis.
But overall, I have no complaints. There are folks doing much tougher regimens, or who just can’t handle it as well even on similar regimens. I’m thankful for things working out as they have so far, and can handle the effects.
After these cycles, I should be getting ready for a Stem Cell Bone Marrow Transplant. This kinda blew my mind… it’s nothing like what I’d imagined a transplant could be, as there’s no direct removing or adding of anything. When the time comes, I’ll get drugs to make my body create more stem cells, which will later be collected and put on ice. I’ll later be admitted to the hospital and hit with a high dose of chemo to kill off my bone marrow. After that, the “transplant” is simple feeding my own stem cells back to me via IV… they know where to go, and should grow fresh healthy bone marrow.
Naturally, there are major ups and downs that’ll come with this process. The high dose chemo will suck and there will be plenty of nausea and possibly some vomiting (doc says 100% get nauseous, 10% vomit). Then as the bone marrow dies and is re-grown, my blood counts will take turns dropping off and my immune system will be temporarily shut down. This means fatigue, and having to take the utmost care to not get really sick. This is while I’ll be staying in the hospital through the whole process, for about 3 weeks, in order to remain in as much of a controlled environment as possible.
So we have quite a road to travel in front of us, but we’ll get it done!