It's back.
I felt the familiar little nodes popping out of my neck back in the first week of November. I was sitting on the couch with my whole world there next to me. My boys. I went to the bathroom to cry as silently as I could. I knew. This ain't my first rodeo.
Then came the CT scan, biopsy, another port placement.
More treatment.
This time, we tried a very new drug called Brentuximab. It just came out of clinical trials not more than two years ago, and is genetically engineered to send your own antibodies (combined with targeted chemotherapy) directly to the Reed-Sternburg cell, which is the big bad malignant cell that makes up Hodgkin's Lymphoma. And for the last two months, it worked. The tumors in my neck shrank.
And then two weeks ago I felt new, hard, painful nodes in my neck. It had stopped working.
I mean, crap, you know?
So the last two weeks have been hard. Progressively, it got more and more difficult to breathe, to stay awake past noon, to go to work and stay standing. I've felt powerless, in pain, being consumed by tumors again.
And that brings us to the most recent developments. I had a new treatment on Friday, a salvage chemo called GVD. It's a three chemo cocktail that consists of Gemcitabine, Vinorelbine, and Doxorubicin. I was infused with The G and the V with no problem; however, about four minutes into my infusion of Doxorubicin, I had a reaction. I had leaned forward to take a picture of the IV bag, (pink chemo, couldn't pass it up) and when I sat back, a terrible warmth filled my belly, spreading up to my chest. I couldn't breathe. Thank goodness my mother was sitting with me- she ran and got the nurses, who immediately stopped the drip, put me on oxygen and filled me with Benedryl. I heard myself gasping out "help me" over and over. And then, finally, I could breathe again.
It was absolutely terrifying. But two out of three ain't bad, I say.
Anyhoo, we'll be trying again next week. Gulp. I'll be loading up on pre-meds, and hopefully that will nip any bad reaction in the bud.
And the good news? I'm feeling so much better. On Sunday, I walked outside and took a deep breath. I could breathe. I still feel like I'm going through chemo... you know... incredibly crappy. The weekends are especially bad. But compared to last week? Much better. You know it's bad when you feel "good" on chemo!
So I'm feeling hopeful. I get treatment every week until I'm back in remission, I guess. Then comes an Allogenic Stem Cell Transplant.
But we're not there yet.
