Humble apologies for neglecting my blog during chemotherapy treatments. I meant to bring you on this journey with me, but found I couldn’t after a few sessions. Altogether I had eight sessions over six months and reduced my PSA (bad number) from 394 to 5.5. At the moment, I’m at the end of a month of feeling good and am on the upswing.
Let me tell you, chemotherapy takes a lot more out of you, and in ways you might not foresee, than you would expect. You may have seen people going through the struggle and gotten some idea of the exhaustion. But you can’t really know it unless you go through it, until you feel your energy stolen, feel the sheer lack of strength in your muscles down to your bones. Until you can’t even open a jar of pickles or hold onto your phone.
My particular drug weakened my fingernails and toenails. Opening cat food cans bruised my fingertips. Eventually, they swelled and stayed swollen. Taping or bumping them against anything was painful and I had to wear latex gloves when washing dishes because the hot water made them sting. At the end of treatment, as new nails were growing in and pushing out the damaged ones, my right, big toenail broke loose at the top, while remaining attached to the new nail at the base. To prevent it being ripped off, I had to keep it taped on.
A month later the new nail growth is progressing nicely and I have been able to put the dish washing gloves aside. My fingertips still feel somewhat swollen, though.
You lose hair from everywhere on your body, not just your head. Because chemo drugs attack fast growing cells: cancer, fingernails, hair follicles, etc. My daughter and I buzzed my hair with a do-it-yourself kit. It wasn’t a perfect cut, but my hair was too thin to worry about it. Also, when I suddenly grew winded just walking up a flight of steps, my hairstyle became the least of my worries.
Of course, it’s all growing back unevenly, including my beard. Although, surprisingly, it appears to be all blond still. For a while I expected it would just come back pure white and I’d be growing it out for the Gandalf look. As it seems to be going back to where it was, we’ll just have to get better with the DIY gear. The wizardly guise will have to wait for my later years.
My ankles began to swell, which the doctor had told me to watch out for. Eventually, all of me swelled up and my weight expanded with my ballooning body. When I looked in the mirror, I saw what could have been mistaken for a beached whale walking upright. Well, not quite that bad. But definitely a hairless, bloated, white ape. I was the heaviest I have ever been.
I joined the community fitness center to begin walking a few times a week just to keep from getting worse. The swelling was making any use of my legs difficult. I was literally plodding as I walked the track. I couldn’t walk up the stairs from our basement without pausing. Halfway through a weeklong course of water pills the swelling had reduced to where I could get up the stairs without stopping. Today, I can ascend them without needing to grab onto anything or lean on the wall. I have also started using the stationary bike at the fitness center as I work to recover normal movement.
Another set of short-lived, fast-growing cells are your tastebuds. Did you know they only last two weeks and are constantly replenishing themselves? I do now. After each treatment, and I managed eight cycles, I would have five to seven days of altered/diminished taste (dysgeusia/hypogeusia) to no taste at all (ageusia), while I waited for enough tastebuds to grow back as the initial blast from the medication eased.
There were a few days I could barely eat because everything tasted wrong or bad. Did nothing to help the weight gain, though. Guess I made up for it when my sense of taste returned.
Fortunately, the worst part of the recovery period only lasted a week. I would have a bad week, a so-so week, then a good week before receiving the next dose over the six months of treatment. I was able to get a few things done in the so-so weeks and was almost like normal in the good weeks. I managed some small projects over the winter. A few. My daughter is beginning to drum her fingers on the table waiting on some home repairs I need to make. I can put them on my radar now.
When it came time for a ninth treatment, my doctor and I took an assessment of my condition and the diminishing returns of the medication. The cancer and your body gradually build up a tolerance to the drug. Unfortunately, the cumulative side effects remained. My fingers looked ready to fall apart and if I swelled up any more I would have needed a shoehorn to put on my slippers. As it stood, fluid was beginning to collect in my lungs. We opted to stop chemotherapy at this point and go on a maintenance regimen of two drugs, one received quarterly and the other semi-annually. Neither one results in debilitating side-effects.
I’m still working to get my lungs to feel clear. My health goals for the next few weeks are to concentrate on rebuilding my lung power and endurance.
The outcome was acceptable to my oncologist. We never expected to reduce my PSA to zero. Given anything over 10 would signal a concern, had I not already had cancer, I’m also pleased with the low number. While ideally you want zero, levels of up to 4 are not unusual for a man my age. So, I can live with 5.5.
Which was the goal at the beginning of treatment; get it to a level I could live with. Literally. I will always have this disease. However, it’s at a controllable point and won’t impact my life anymore. Other than time spent going for the maintenance drugs six times a year.
If it should resurge, we have other options. One, most commonly applied, is a third medication which is like a low dose chemo drug taken daily in a pill form. We won’t go this route unless it’s necessary. Two, we did genetic testing of my cancer and found I had a P-ten mutation, for which there are several clinical trials going on right now. I could be put into one of those or go on a treatment resulting from one of them. We have a few more tricks up our sleeve even in as good as position as I am right now.
Of course, I turn sixty-five this year and know I will need to adjust my activities eventually, regardless of having cancer. I had already begun building my new beds out of low maintenance stone so I’m not rebuilding beds every year. The expansion went on hold last fall. This week, I received the blocks and got back to it. I’ll pace myself; one dug in and leveled out per day when the weather is decent. Then, two weeks from now, I’ll start my seedlings for the year, one I look forward to being more normal. I have never craved normal and boring more in my life.
As though our microfarm bores me. It’s challenging and what I’ve always wanted to have. And now that cancer is no longer in control and chemotherapy with all the associated lost time and damage to my body is over, I can.
The Little Farm in Town 