NO MORE CHEMO!

I received my last cycle of chemo today. After all of the dramatics and problems I went through this week, this was by no means a certainty. Even when I presented at the cancer treatment centre I was not counting my proverbial chickens; there could still be complications that could result in my treatment being delayed or cancelled entirely.  And that is very nearly what happened.

Remember the dance of a thousand steps that I had to do because my nurses couldn't get blood return from my PICC? Yeah... that happened again. But this time I was able to tilt and stretch my head in just the right way so that my delightful nurse - who is maybe five minutes older than my son but is still a very capable nurse - was able to get blood return.

Phew! Crisis avoided.

You see, last time this happened I received my chemotherapy up to the point of my 'baby bottle' infusion through a newly-started peripheral IV. I am an easy IV start and I have good, robust veins, yet after two hours of infusing toxic chemotherapy through this IV the vein was red, irritated, and sore. My arm remained sore afterward, too. Heat would help - for a while - and make the irritated vein settle down. But as soon as the heating pad came off, the pain started again. That was six weeks ago and there has not been a single day that my arm has not hurt, at least a little. According to the nurses, nurse practitioners, my GP, and the ERP who have all examined it the vein is 'blown', which means that it will not function any more as a vein. It works just fine as a source of inflammation and pain, but it won't carry blood back to my heart again in my lifetime.

That's not really the problems that it sounds like. For one thing, new capillary beds will form to carry the blood to other veins and on to my heart so the loss of this single peripheral vein is relatively inconsequential. For another thing, the vein should heal quickly... once I'm done getting the chemotherapy that actively prevents any normal healing from occurring. And in a couple of weeks that can start to happen.

Wait... what? A couple of weeks? But didn't I just say that I was done my chemo?

Well... yes. Technically. But as I am writing this post my baby bottle (technically called a Baxter Intermate Infusor) of flurouracil has just started running. It will run for the next two days, after which I will be done my chemo, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, once a drug is given it takes a while for it to fully leave your body. In the case of the two chemo agents I am getting, that could take several weeks depending on how you consider the drug is leaving my body (and yes, it is a very complicated question with an even more complicated series of answers. Pharmacokinetics is the study of how this happens and there are people out there that have PhDs in this one subject area alone). Long story short... it's complicated but it will take a while. And no matter what calculation is applied some of the effects of the chemo can last up to six months in some cases. So it's possible that it will take quite some time before I feel 'normal again'.

Yeah... I guess I've never really felt 'normal'. Maybe 'back to baseline' is a better term.

Regardless, I am very excited that this is the last cycle of chemotherapy that I will go through. I am even more excited that I can get my PICC out on Monday. I'll be able to shower normally, I'll be able to get back to the gym and exercise, building my strength and endurance up from my currently (very shockingly bad) deconditioned state to something closer to my baseline level of strength and endurance. I am excited about that, and I'm excited that even though I will feel like various types of crap for the next few weeks I will no longer be getting knocked back down every time that I start to feel the tiniest bit human again. I can pee standing up (an odd thing to be excited about but I would be lying if I claimed I wasn't getting a little tired of sitting every time I need to pee), I can start expanding my diet again, and I can start planning my life more than a day in advance.

I can live like a person without cancer, to be perfectly blunt. Because that's what I will be in the very near future - no longer a cancer patient, but a person without cancer.

And that's the best ending to this journey that anyone can hope for.

Hop!

And as a final treat, here's a couple of photos of me getting my last treatment and then ringing the victory bell as I leave the cancer treatment centre....

Two thumbs up. Must be good, right?

Ding, Ding! This boy's DONE!!