Mike Judge vs Ewing's Sarcoma

These past several months have been very stressful for me. It has been a roller coaster ride as far as stress goes. My peak stress would be when I was being diagnosed. Uncertainty is something I really don't like. None of us do. And back then there was so much of it. I was thrown into a world where I knew very little. I had never even heard of a sarcoma before, and in just a few weeks from my first appointment I would find out that my "arm strain" was really an aggressive bone cancer. Believe it or not, my stress dropped a lot when I found out the diagnosis. I finally knew what was wrong with me, and I was ready to do whatever possible to be cured. I was more stressed during the first three cycles, and surgery than these past three cycles. I would be constantly feeling my arm to verify that the tumor was shrinking. My fear of the treatment not working was obsessive. After surgery I hit a low in stress over the past year. The cancer was out, scans were clear, surgery went ...

I wasn't sure what to title this post. I was originally going to title it "Treatment Complete", or "Last week of chemo", or something like that, but I didn't want to jinx anything. I'll discuss more about this soon, but first let's get this last week of treatment out of the way. I had a lot of fears going into the last week of treatment, and luckily for me it ended up not being the absolute worst like I expected  it to be. I didn't have to drink the Mesna Thank God! But I did receive a very large dosage in my treatment. Like twice as much in previous cycles. I went through a bag and a half of lifesaver mints last week to combat the taste! On Monday I received way too much Mesna, and got really pale, and almost vomited. So he lowered the dosage a little, and I stayed on that amount for the rest of the week. I had average bladder irritation compared to previous cycles. I was really tired throughout the week, but I didn't have any other side...

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I'm in the treatment center right now, and I figured I would get a little update on here. The last two weeks I have been doing a lot of resting, and haven't been up to blogging. On the bright side I did have some friends over last week which was really nice. The only new side effect I had to deal with from my last post other than the increased fatigue was a little bit of thrush. If you're not aware thrush is a painful fungal infection in your mouth, and if not treated quickly can get pretty bad. We caught it pretty early, and the prescribed Nystatin cleared it up in a few days. It was pretty gross looking, and it was shocking to see how well the medication worked for it.  This week is my last week of treatment as long as my scans are clear. You would think I would be really excited right now, but I have a rough week ahead of me. I think it's going to be hard for me to truly be satisfied until I get that final "clear" ...

On Thursday I received my last dose of my A cocktail of drugs. My last dosage of Cyclophosphamide, Vincristine, and Doxorubicin(the red devil) that is. I won't be missing these drugs at all. My day of treatment was longer than I expected, and that was because of the Cystitis that I had developed in my last cycle. I received an extra hour of hydration along with an extra half hour of Mesna to protect my bladder. It was a pretty long day, but I got through it. The bladder irritation feels almost better. It's sometimes uncomfortable, but most of the time feels normal.  Receiving my last dose of "The Red Devil" The only thing that can get me through the Mesna I'm not looking forward to my last B week which will be from the 17th-21st. There are some changes to my treatment which will make it my most difficult week yet. There will be two major changes to the week.  1. The added an hour and a half to each day due to the added Mesna, and hydration. That...

As you all already know the last day of the month of February is rare diseases day. Wait, no you didn't. I’m willing to bet that not one of you out there reading this knew that. Do you know that July is sarcoma awareness month? Or that pediatric cancer awareness month comes the month before pink october? No to both? I’m not surprised because one year ago… Neither did I. As you already know I was diagnosed with a very rare form of bone cancer named Ewing’s Sarcoma. Over the past several months I have learned a lot about sarcoma, and pediatric cancer. Here are some statistics that I’d like to share with you. They may surprise you. I know I was shocked, and upset when I read some of these facts because my assumptions about these diseases were completely wrong. Sarcoma Facts  There are over 50 types of sarcoma  At any one time there are approximately 50,000 people struggling with the disease.  Each year there are 14,000 people diagnosed with sarcoma, and 6,000 die from...

Since my last post I have had one major complication occur due to treatment. Hemorrhagic cystitis. Well what's that? It's bleeding of the bladder, and it's easily the most painful, and bothersome side effect that I have gotten from my treatment. It started on Friday morning when I noticed that it was painful to urinate. This was new to me because usually during my B treatment weeks I pee in morse code by Wednesday(Grown ups reference), but it would never get any worse than that. Especially not painful. This couldn't be good. I told my oncologist about it, and he increased my Mesna dosage to protect my bladder, and said if it gets any worse then he would cancel my ifosfamide chemo drug on Monday. On Saturday it was more painful, and also more frequent. It's now Thursday as I'm writing this, and the longest time I have had in between peeing is an hour and a half and that was today. That includes nights too. Average time is 15-20 minutes during the day, and 30-60...

Right now I'm in Radnor stuck in a hotel with a crazy snowstorm brewing outside. This storm is crazy. We already got 10 inches! Chemo was cancelled today due to the storm, and I'll be back for day 4 tomorrow. Day 5 will be Monday. Good thing the hotel is located right up the street from clinic. Tomorrow I'll find out how this storm will affect my next cycle. I'm thinking that my next cycle will be moved to next Wednesday because of my shots which would run until next Monday.  So far I've been pretty good this week. This week has definitely been easier than the last B week. It's a shame that we got this storm though. I was only two days away from finishing the cycle, but now I'm so far away. I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of this day off, and then I'll have the same thing over the weekend only to get a day of chemo on Monday. I hope my next cycle is moved from Monday until Wednesday because I don't think I'll be ready for ...