Chemo Cycle 3 and CT Results

It has been quite some time since I have been on here.  I am happy to report that I am so glad for all the nausea, lack of appetite, weakness, sickness, hospitalizations, and all other things chemo are now behind me.  The 3rd round of chemo was really tough to get through.  I felt like I had to drag myself to the treatments and dreaded every bit of it.

One night, at the end of the 3rd round, I vomited up blood.  At this point I had enough of the hospital and just wanted to chalk it up to the chemo thinning the lining of the of my stomach and causing some blood, any excuse to not have to go back to the hospital!  My wife, who has been absolutely amazing through this whole sickness, brought some reason in and convinced me to call the on call Dr at the cancer center.  There was not a whole lot of conversation with the on call Dr once he got back with me.  The answer was simple, go the ER….  Not the news I wanted to hear.  In my mind I was like “fine… I will go to the ER and get this over with and be back home in a few hours”.

I got to the ER and it was packed.  I had a mask on, and they thankfully separated me from everyone else there.  After a while, they took my blood and brought me into the room.  I waited for the Dr to come in and hopefully tell me it was all good and they would send me home, but no, no no, no, no!  “Mr.  Zepernick, your white blood cells are extremely low and you are neutropenic.  Your platelets are also extremely low and we are worried that you may have some internal bleeding.  We have scheduled a CT Scan and a X-Ray and will be admitting you.”  I wanted to scream, the last thing I wanted was to be back in the hospital again.

The GI docs diagnosed me with a Mallory-Weis tear, which is a tear in the esophagus.  They kept me on a liquid diet for 2 days.  I really wanted to eat something solid, but it was also hurting really bad for solid foods to go down.  They found out that I had thrush under my tongue and in my throat.  I had always thought that was something only babies got, but found out it is for people with weakened immune systems too.  They also ended up giving me a platelet transfusion to raise my count.

The one positive was that the CT Scan was able to pickup the mass in my lymph nodes, because they happened to be scanning the same area when they were checking my stomach.  This was going to be my first time seeing it since I started chemo.  I was able to get the results from my online patient portal before talking to the oncologist about it.  The report said that the mass had shrunk down to 3cm x 3cm.  I was hoping that it was going to be nothing left, but I was happy that it had shrunk considerably from what it was.  All that work of going to chemo was not for nothing, praise God!  However, I did not know what the remainder meant.  Was it scar tissue, does this mean another round of chemo, or surgery?

A week later, I finally got to talk to the oncologist about the CT scan.  He said I am right at the border line for surgery.  Anything 3cm or bigger calls for surgery, but I also had the CT Scan early and the chemo could still be working.  We decided to do another scan mid September to see if it had shrunk down any further.  Anything below 3cm would be considered scar tissue and I can go on observation.  I have a PET Scan scheduled for September 20th, and get to meet with the oncologist the next day to find out where we go from here.

I am happy to report that my hair has started to grow back!  It is much softer than it was before, and my facial hair seems to be coming in thicker.  I also got my appetite back, and it has been rather ravenous compared to what it was.  I will update back when I get the results from the PET Scan.