Tom Faranda's Folly

More on chemotherapy

Today is the midpoint between my second and third chemotherapy treatments. I have a tiny bit of mouth soreness and very minor fatigue, but otherwise no negative effects (except for rapid hair disappearance).

My initial chemotherapy - I've had two sessions with two more to go, and then the chemo will change - is called by the acronym RCHOP. The R stands for a synthetic monoclonal antibody called Rituxan, that "sets up" the cancer cells. It's given by IV. The C stands for Cytoxan, a potent anti-cancer chemical, also administered by IV, along with the H and O parts of the cocktail. H and O have unpronounceable names (unpronounceable by me, anyway), and one of them is a bright cranberry color and turns your pee orangish-red. It takes about ninety minutes to administer the Rituxan, and then about an hour for the other three chemicals. However, for a variety of reasons the whole chemo session takes about five hours.

The session is out-patient, at the Sloan Kettering Westchester branch in Sleepy Hollow - right next to Phelps Memorial Hospital. They have a nice solarium with about a dozen recliners. You can read, sleep, or peck away on your laptop while receiving the drugs. Or call your office.

The P part of RCHOP is the steroid Prednisone, which you take orally for the five days after you've gotten the IV. Also, the day after the chemo, you have to turn up again for an injection of a drug (neulasta) designed to maintain your white blood cell count.

Besides the RCHOP drugs, there's a bunch of stuff you take prophylactically. These include an anti-nausea drug by IV (before the Rituxan), as well as anti-nausea pills, and different oral prescriptions that are anti-fungal, anti-viral and anti-bacterial. So lots of pills, and many of them I will be on continuously while the chemo is underway.

RCHOP seems to be a common treatment for a number of lymphomas, and so far I can detect an effect. Within 72 hours of my first session the small nodules in my neck that were swollen disappeared.

There is extensive information on these drugs online. They always have those adverse reaction warnings - the big adverse reaction, of course, being death. A reminder that chemotherapy is quite serious - these are toxic chemicals! But realistically, the oncologists have massive experience with them and the risks are minimized.

Everyone is different and there are many varied chemotherapy regimens, but I suspect my experience is fairly typical. Especially with the modern anti-nausea drugs, for most people chemotherapy may not be the tough ordeal it was ten or fifteen years ago.

Chemotherapy and Hair update

Had my crew cut on Friday, and not a moment too soon! Tonite my youngest (much younger) brother Phil saw the cut and said "That's not a real crew cut." I said "the barber set the electric cutter at one inch and that's good enough for me."

Well, just took a shower and the hair is coming out, fast and furious. As expected. Will try and get a picture tomorrow, because in a few days there wont be anything left.

But there have been very little side effects otherwise. When I have more time in a couple of days I am going to write a longer entry on chemotherapy, as I've experienced it so far.

Spam Comments

 

Who'd a thunk it? After less than a week, I've already gotten some spam comments. "buy stocks", "build a website", "Wow what a great site - I've bookmarked it! Do you need an MPG player?" Will have to figure out how to delete them.

Addendum. Figured out how to delete unwanted spam comments and ads. It's easy to do.

Pending hair loss and bathroom repartee with #2 son

Hair started to go Thursday - yesterday morning. Perfect timing 16 days after my first chemo and two days after the second one. Just about as the docs and nurses predicted. I was in the shower at 7AM when some hair on my head started coming out. As I got out, in walked the 8 yr. old - Tim - to do his teeth. Now we'd prepped the boys that I was going to lose my hair, and Joe (our 7th grader) has already been telling his friends. I pointed to the little amount of hair in the shower and said something like "Tim this is the start of my losing my hair." I am standing there holding a towel with no clothes on - so he doesn't say anything - but points at my crotch!

So I said, "I don't know Tim - some people lose just the hair on their heads and others lose all their hair - but in a couple of weeks I might look just like you."

He didn't say a thing. Just went back to brushing his teeth.

I go for my crew cut today - Friday. Perfect timing.

Just got my copy of "The Catholic Radical"

 

Which is a little publication put out by the SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker house of Worcester, MA. Claire and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy have run a "House of Hospitality" with meals and sleeping arrangements for the down and out for over twenty years. Supporters have lived in the house, some for several years, but the Schaeffer-Duffy's are the heart of this small Catholic Worker community.

I met them about 12 or 14 years ago at a retreat that was held at their House of Hospitality. In their six times a year publication they describe the Catholic Worker movement as "a lay movement offering hospitality to the poor while denouncing injustice and promoting peace." The Schaeffer-Duffy's have traveled worldwide. About two years ago, we invited Claire to our Church, for a facinating discussion (with heart-breaking pictures) of her trip to Afghanistan, shortly after the Taliban were run out of town.

In addition to the cover stories - "U.S. Out of Iraq" and "Venezuela's Rovolution of Hope", Scott had an interesting article entitled "How to Hold a Protest."

The Catholic Worker movement (think Dorothy Day) is pacifist, anarchist, (they don't vote), anti-capitalist, anti-death penalty, anti-abortion, emphasis on manual labor, emphasis on studying their Catholic faith. In other words, pretty radical.

The House gets by on donations, and I believe some small amounts of money that may come in for occasional articles written for Catholic publications. Scott and Claire have four children.

I don't agree with all their positions, but they are not just "talking the talk" they are "walking the walk."

If this sounds like a group you'd like to support, just leave a comment and I'll get you more info. They don't have a website.

NY Times going in the dumper - firing 500 people

 

The NY Times is going in the dumper - yesterday they announced the firing of 500 employees. AND three years ago their stock price was $47.05. Yesterday it was 31.13. The S & P 500 over the same time frame has risen just under 45%. The math is bad for the Gray Lady.

Here's what the Company had to say: In a memo to staffers, company chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson wrote: "We regret that we will see many of our colleagues leave the Company; it is a painful process for all of us."

How fair is this? The Sulzbergers are centi-millionaires - in fact billionaires. A quick back of the envelope calculation says that 500 employees times $70,000 a year in salary and benefits (and that salary figure is probably high) costs $35,000,000 a year.

This is chump change to the Sulzbergers - it's probably the interest on a few of their treasury bonds. So why don't they show some good example to the rest of the wealthy people in America and put a kind of voluntary "Tax" on their wealth by putting the money into the Company to save these jobs?? "Painful process" indeed. Now that they are charging $50 a year to access the NY Times "Crown Jewels" - their op ed writers Krugman, Dowd, et al, they are sure to make up their shortfall in no time at all.

The NYT needs to hire Roger Ailes to get this mess cleaned up. Or maybe KKKarl Rove.

My brother Phil says that the pink slipped employees "They were fact checkers, many of whom worked for Krugman. Not needed."

I wish I'd thought of that line.

Yankees - this year's team of Destiny?

 

As I left the gym tonite, I caught a minute of the Yanks v. Orioles. Yanks ahead 5-3, man on first, no outs. Jeter hits easy double play ball back to pitcher - who drops it taking it out of his glove, picks it up , drops it again - everybody safe. Instead of two outs there are men on first and second, no outs.

Yanks go on to score four runs. Yanks have won something like 8 out of their last nine- most of them 50-50 games. Suddenly it's the pennant stretch run, and they have their mojo back.

Baseball is a funny game, and having your mojo is really important. So I think the Yanks are good money to win the World Series. You heard it here first.

As I post this, the Yanks are leading 10-6 in the top of the seventh at the Stadium.

Second Chemotherapy Session

The session went pretty well. It ran from about 9:30 to 3 o'clock. The good news was that Dr. Chia, the oncologist I saw before the session, felt that since I'd tolerated the first chemo session very well, it was likely the other session would go well as far as side effects. And all the nurses agreed. So that was good.

They also told me it would be a few days before my hair starts falling out, and it wouldn't all come out at once. So I am postponing my crew cut to Friday. But I am going to get one. Cheryl Scott, the oncology nurse who I first met when I started with visits over two years ago, pointed out that it would probably help the boys get used to the hair lose if I have a crew cut first.

I went to the gym tonite and felt really good. Only cut back a little - road the bike for 20 minutes and then did my usual weights.

Chemotherapy Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will have my second chemotherapy session - as an out-patient at the Memorial Sloan Kettering satellite offices in Sleepy Hollow. The building adjacent to, and owned by Phelps Memorial Hospital.

I was diagnosed with lymphoma a little over two years ago, after a small lump in my neck was taken out.

Here is a little background on how I came to need chemo:

At the beginning of the summer I'd had some enlarged lymph nodes in my neck. It turned out that the swelling was probably due to a sinus infection and it cleared up.

However in July I developed a kidney ailment, which manifested itself as a bad case of edema, landing me in Sloan Kettering for six days (should have only been four, but they couldn't get me in for a thirty minute kidney biopsy and didn't want to let me out until it got done). Turns out I had something called "Nephrotic Syndrome" later changed to "Minimum Change Disease" and gained over 15 pounds of fluid. Anyway it cleared up pretty quickly (with diuretics; I pee'd my brains out for about three days) and I presumed the Lymphoma Guru who I see at Sloan (Dr. Andrew Zelenetz, chairman of the lymphoma service) would continue with the current treatment plan for my lymphoma - which was to do nothing. For two years I was in the "Watchful Waiting" phase, needing no treatment since I felt fine and showing no symptoms of consequence.

So we were surprised when he told us that the kidney issue was a "classic manifestation of mantle cell lymphoma" and we should start aggressive therapy.

Which I have now done. Tomorrow I have the second of four outpatient chemotherapy sessions. The acronym for this particular chemo is rCHOP. When this is done, I will have three more chemo sessions, each requiring a two day stay at MSK in the City. These sessions will also be two weeks apart. This acronym is ICE.

After this is completed (takes three months) comes the heavy stuff! I will be admitted to MSK and they'll take some of my stem cells and freeze them. Then I'll be given "high dose chemo" (no acronym, just "high dose chemo") for about a week - which is supposed to kill everything, unfortunately including my own immune system. The stem cells are then put back in and my immune system starts rebuilding itself. Meanwhile I am hospitalized in isolation.The total hospitalization is thirty (30) days.

Of course we were pretty stunned when the Lymphoma guy told us the last part but within a day or two had adjusted to the whole thing. It seems this therapy is now fairly common. Judy Anderson knows a Maryknoll priest who had it done nine years ago and then went back to Peru. The next time I saw the lymphoma Doc I mentioned the priest to him and he said "Oh yeah I remember Fr. S. D." He had treated him. Depending on how fast my immune system recovers, I could be out in less than thirty days - Zelenetz said his record is 17 days.

The optimal result of all this is that I could go symptom free for five to ten years. Unfortunately the lymphoma is not eradicated. It could also recur in less than five years, so we'll see. I am actually fortunate that I have an indolent version of this lymphoma, and was able to go two years without any treatment. The fast moving versions of mantle cell can be quite catastrophic.

The side effects of the first chemo session were pretty inconsequential. Of course the oncologists put you on all sorts of meds prophylactically - anti-nausea, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral. The only thing I got was a thrush infection in my mouth, which cleared up with an oral medicine (NyStatin). Otherwise no problems, except a little sleep difficulty.

So we'll see about the second session - but for sure I will start having my hair fall out. So the day after chemo I will be getting a crew cut. The last time I had a crew cut was September of freshman year in high school, forty years ago!

Signing off. Tomorrow I'll have to send out emails informing poeple this weblog exists.

First Post

This web journal was named and begun on Sept. 8th on another weblog service, and today I decided to move the fledgling operation over to blogspot or blogger.com, which is owned by Goggle. The estimate is that there are almost 17 million weblogs out there, and Goggle is hosting 8 million of them.

This is supposed to be easy, and I'm sure that eventually it will be, but it took me over ninety minutes to just get this far - journal description, my profile, some basic settings.

This afternoon, over brunch, my 12 year old son Joe said he was considering taking the name Eudoxius as his confirmation name. While Fr. Mike was discussing the impending Church capital campaign at the homily, Joe had read about Eudoxius in the Magnificat daily devotional book I'd brought to Mass. Eudoxius - not exactly a common name. But it evidently used to be common - the Eudoxius Joe is interested in is here Catholic Online - Saints & Angels - St. Eudoxius , not the Eudoxius Bishop of Antioch or the Arian Eudoxius.

Joseph Edward Eudoxuis Faranda. Hmmm.