On Monday, June 27th I will be starting treatments. She indicated that the drug that I will take (impulimbab - or Yervoy) is actually not considered chemotherapy. It is basically given by IV (part of the reason for the Mediport) for 90 minutes once every three weeks for 4 times - so for 12 weeks. It is an immunotherapy drug and basically builds up your immune system to fight the cancer throughout your body.
She indicated that for the most part, the worst symptom of this drug is actually diarrhea. She also said that a few patients get nauseous but not many. The only other potential issues that she will be watching is that it can affect either your pituitary gland or thyroid. If this were to happen, there are medications that they can give for that.
We then went and met with the radiation oncologist. I will be starting radiation next week on both my brain and my hip. As he indicated, when they do surgery on your brain, they try to get as much of the tumor as they can without getting too much 'good' brain as that can cause problems. He asked me a bunch of questions ... what is 3+3 (6); how do you spell 'world' and how do you spell it backwards (dlrow); what is the year (2011); what is the month (June); who is the president (Obama); okay, and the one I couldn't get .... who was the previous president (got it after awhile of thinking and then saying Clinton and then said George W. Bush); he also asked me to remember the colors yellow, red and black and then several minutes later went back and asked what colors he had asked me. Got those too! These are all things that can be affected by both the surgery as well as brain radiation over a period of time. He said if you could do a complex math problem in your head, after surgery/radiation, you might need to do it on paper with a pencil. He also said it would be liking forgetting were you put your keys, etc. We did neurological tests like having my move my eyes where his finger moved, touching my finger to his, touching my finger to my nose, lifting my legs, lifting my arms, walking balanced on a line - like a sobriety test, etc. I think I passed all tests for the most part.
They are working to schedule this still but the plan is that I will be going in next week to get a halo put on my head and they will then work that day with the neurosurgeon to set up the brain radiation treatment. That day/night I will then have my the halo removed and the radiation on my brain done. The brain radiation will be done only once on each of the two spots. (He indicated that if you have 3 or less spots on the brain, they try to do what they call stereotactic radiation.... focused radiation beams targeting a well-defined tumor with precise treatment set-up to deliver the radiation to dose to with extreme accuracy to the area of where the tumor was and to kill any cells that may still be in that area.)
When I had my PET scan, my hip came back with a 'hot' spot. They sent me for an MRI last Friday to make sure that the hip did not have cancer in it. See below for picture but they found that the my right hip does indeed have cancer in the muscle and it is now starting to move towards the bone. They are going to radiate my hip as well. For the hip, I will have to go for five days at approximately 10-20 minutes each time.
My oncologist and I spoke about when I could go back to work. Obviously, she gave me a date of October 3rd (since this is when my treatments will be done); I asked if I was feeling okay after treatments if it could be earlier than that. I guess I will just have to wait and see how I am with the treatment and go from there. I can't drive anyway but I am sure that I could pay a co-worker to carpool with them! (And, can you tell that I am anxious to get back to work? I love my job and definitely want to get back there before October 3rd! Hopefully I will be able to go back and then take time off for treatments.... that is my goal! I do know that I need to be healthy and know I couldn't go back yet but I am hoping in the next month or two I will be able to go back!)
The only other thing I was thinking about blogging about is that I haven't drove since Monday, May 9th! It's weird to to be stuck in your house and not be able to go whenever you want - I miss that! I've had MANY people offer to take me anywhere and I am greatful ... it's just weird not to be able to be independent! Plus, I am still not allowed to lift more than 10 pounds - so no hauling anything! This has also been hard for me.
I am looking forward to tomorrow! We decided that because appointments are going to be busy for the next few weeks now, we are going to take the kids and either go camping or go somewhere for a few days! Looking forward to feeling good and hanging out with my family!!!!!
Love you, hunnie!
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