Con limón y sal

This is a little overdue...I'm reporting back now that I'm on the other side of the first round of ICE. I'm ok, in fact, ever since about Monday I feel almost back to normal....which makes me just really super happy. I remember this feeling from last year when I was in treatment...it's a feeling that just makes you so happy you want to cry all the time and smile from ear to ear and celebrate every single second that you're not sick....and enjoy every second because you know the sick is coming back. Last week was pretty awful...just really terrible. I had underestimated the impact chemo was going to have on me...underestimated its persistent, tough fight, and overestimated my ability to fight back. Instead, and not the slightest bit slowed by my defense, it rolled over me and won round one. Everything thing went reasonably well in the hospital, there were a few problems, but the nice thing about being in the hospital is that they get on that stuff fast, and c...

Home and resting today after ICE. That's all for now. Thank you for your well wishes and hugs. En Casa Ya estoy en casa y descansando despues del tratamiento. Eso es todo por ahorita, luego cuento mas. Gracias por sus buen deseos y abrazos.

It's Ice, get it? Right? ICE...hilarious. The Plan So, after my appointment with the oncologist this morning, the following is the treatment plan for my recurrent Hodgkin's: 1. ICE Chemotherapy ICE stands for Ifosfamide, carboplatin, and etoposide, which are just a bunch of poisons that you can google at your leisure...but they basically cause all the same old side effects of chemo - nausea, vomitting, hair loss, fatigue, yuck, yuck, yuck. Plus, the Ifosfamide can cause bladder problems, so they keep you on lots of fluids to try to prevent or minimize that. This chemo will be administered over three days, during which I'll be staying in the hospital (Providence - new cancer center...holla). Then, I'll have some recovery - depending on how fast my blood counts recover to an acceptable level, this may be anywhere from 18-25 days. Then back to the hospital for 3 days for another round of ICE. According to Drs, we will probably only do two rounds of ICE, but will ha...

Update: On Thursday, we finished the embryo-freezing process…which, by the way, is a completely fascinating process - the science is amazing, and my fertility doctor, Dr. Matteri, is absolutely the best, my nurse clinician, Andrea Speck-Zulack, is amazingly supportive and knowledgeable and helpful, and their office, Oregon Reproductive Medicine, in conjunction with Fertile Hope (www.fertilehope.com) are helping make the whole thing more affordable, and therefore possible for me. Anyway, I thought I would post at least the short version of how it goes, since it’s so crazy and cool to me. They started out explaining everything, etc, etc, and checking with my oncologist to make sure it was ok to put treatment on hold for a month to get this done. Then, they did blood work on Luis and me, did an ultrasound (from the inside…never had that experience before…), and taught us how to administer the injections. Then, on day 2 of my cycle I started giving myself injections of Menopur and Repronex...