All Done With Chemo

Finally finished my last chemo cycle this week. What a relief.  Four months ago when I first learned that chemo was to be part of my treatment, this day seemed an eternity away.  And now it's come and gone and the second phase of surgery is just around the corner.

So now I'm waiting for follow-up appointments with the surgeon and oncologist.  I'm hoping to see the surgeon in a week or so and get the surgery scheduled. At least then I'll know what date I'm working towards. I am guessing it will be around mid September. 

I have a CAT scan scheduled for the 25th of this month and I'm expecting it will show the chemo had some positive activity on the tumour. My local oncologist said the in the grand scheme of things I tolerated the chemo very well.  My regular GC chemo was supplemented with a trial drug which supposedly has shown very positive activity on bladder cancer, even though it was developed for kidney cancer.  The trial drug definitely 'enhanced' the side effects of the regular chemo drugs, particularly fatigue. Though the greater problems I had were more systemic with blood counts than physical.

Anyway, that's all behind me now and I look onward -but not forward- to surgery.  Still very mixed over the bladder reconstruction option I'll go with.  So many pros and cons of each to consider, but I have some time yet.

Went to a free concert Friday to see, get this, Hermans Hermits!  Thought they were all retired by now?  Wrong, well Peter Noone isn't, and actually they put on a pretty good show.  Of course they sang all their hits along with some other Brit hits of the same era.  The crowd was also quite a bit larger than expected. Very entertaining, much more so than we expected.

This evening I am missing out on another free concert, KC & The Sunshine Band -pretty bummed out really as I think it will be an excellent show.  I thought 2 concerts in a row might be too much energy expended because this weekend after the 2nd chemo dose is the one that got me in hospital on the 2 previous occasions, when I may have overdone the energy.  Or it could have just been the insomnia, which incidentally has improved dramatically, that made me more susceptible.  Either way, I decided to pass on tonight and stay home, and Sue went with others of our group.

Now chemo is done I can get back to my networking and committee meetings -been a bit remiss with both, what with the fatigue.

So that's all I have for this week.

Be well to All,
Chris