ICE number 2

So I finally broke down and decided to start blogging my experiences. I always thought that blogging was something people that lacked a healthy social life did but now I think it may be a good way to let my interesting (to say the least) life story be known. OK, so I got that out of the way, lets get down to brass tacks...

Last week I had my second round of ICE salvage chemotherapy, basically thats the early preparation for my stem cell transplantation. I tolerated the chemo actually pretty well. I had a couple days where I was nauseated but nothing I couldn't stand. At this point I only feel a little sluggish, the best way to describe it is to imagine the last 2 hours of a hangover where you don't feel 100% but are far from being trashed. That's where I am now.

One of the side effects of the ICE chemotherapy is that it kills alot of white blood cells and weakens my immune system. To combat that I get a shot called Neulasta. You may have seen commercials for it on TV. The thing about Neulasta is that, number one, it hurts like a bitch when I'm getting it injected and, number two, about five days after injection, my bones feel like someone beat me with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, I'm right at the five day point now and can expect to be in considerable pain soon. So I'm pretty excited about that.

The next step in this transplantation process is a PET scan. For those unfimiliar with that, it is basically like a CT scan or MRI that can detect cancer. Around the end of the month I'll have a PET scan to see if I'm in remission or at least very close to it. If I am in remission then I travel to Omaha for the collection phase of the transplantation. Basically I go up to Nebraska Medical Center and they hook me up to a machine like a dialysis machine that takes stem cells out of my blood and returns the rest of my blood to normal circulation. To clarify, a stem cell is like a baby white blood cell that hasn't decided to become a white blood cell yet. I'll need to collect these baby cells because later therapy will kill all the white cells I have in my body and they will need to recolonize my body with the harvested cells. Harvesting stem cells should be pretty quick, I've heard estimates ranging from one day to two weeks. Taking into consideration how well my white cells have heald up during treatment thus far I expect to be closer to one day than two weeks.

Once I've collected a sufficient number of stem cells (approximately 9 million) the real fun part begins. I'll be admitted to the hospital in Omaha for high-dose chemotherapy. From what I've read it will be a five day marathon where I will be infused with a chemotherapy called BEAM. Basically this is the atomic bomb of chemotherapies. It will wipe out all of my white blood cells, bone marrow and make my immunities virtually dissapear. After the five day infusion they doctors will put the collected stem cells back in to my body and hopefully they will regrow the lost white blood cells and bone marrow. I'll be on a modified reverse isolation protocol for about two or three weeks before my white blood cells are back to a point where I can leave isolation. Simple enough.

Right now I'm really motivated to do this thing and get it over with. Pardon my language but I'm really tired of the fucking cancer business. I'm ready to get back to the real world. But you know what they say " All good things to those who wait."