Day 46, Chemo Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow begins the latest and most aggressive attack in my war on the bastard that is advanced prostate cancer: chemotherapy.  It's very likely that chemotherapy will kill a large number of the cancer cells, adding both years and quality to my life.  However, it is very unlikely to kill all of them and be a complete cure.  Having said that, I'm hopeful that it will not only kill the majority of the cancer, but combined with all the other chemicals going into my body will activate the dormant X-Men mutations inside of me, giving me new and exciting super powers.

The drug I will be given is Docataxel, which is a synthetic form of a toxin first discovered in a plant.  Even though it was patented in the 80s and approved in the 90s, my treatment is considered state of the art.  Several recently completed studies have shown that combining hormone therapy and chemotherapy at the same time improve outcomes.  Previously, chemotherapy was held in reserve until after the cancer mutated to become resistant to the hormone therapy.  So while the drugs are relatively old and boring, they way they're being combined is relatively new and exciting.

Tomorrow I will go to the oncologist's office and before treatment my body weight, blood counts, and probably a few other things will be checked to ensure I'm healthy enough for treatment.  Assuming everything checks out, I'll be given the drug through an IV and that will take a little over an hour.  Then there will be follow-up appointments for the next two weeks to see how I am doing.  That will make one round of treatment lasting three weeks.  Then plan is for me to get 6 rounds of treatment, lasting 18 weeks (4-ish months!) total.

To say that this is a bit intimidating is an understatement.  I'm still recovering from the radiation treatment and bladder surgery from a month ago.  My weight is down about 10 lbs in that time and I haven't been able to regain anything.  On the bright side, I've discovered the secret to easy weight loss.

Continued weight loss is one of the risks I face.  Fighting cancer requires a lot of high quality calories and protein.  If I'm not able to eat, or my body isn't able to absorb the nutrients from what I do eat, the weight loss will continue.  This makes it more difficult for my body to recover from the treatment, and also raises the risk that I will need to delay or miss a treatment.  Delaying or missing a treatment makes the treatment less effective, as it gives the cancer an opportunity to recover.

I'm also feeling a bit frustrated.  The radiation was supposed to address the back pain I've been feeling, and I was hopeful that after a couple weeks I'd feel healthy and be regaining weight.  I could use the time between radiation and chemo to travel and visit family and friends.  But as I read more about radiation treatment it seems I underestimated the time it can take to work and the duration of the side effects.  Full recovery could take as long as a couple months.

While I have been able to run occasionally and travel to Vermont, there's also been a lot of resting on the couch between activities, which adds to the frustration.  Then there's the unpredictability of life as well.  On the last trip to Vermont the power was out for days due to a heavy wet snow.  We decided to drain the plumbing to avoid frozen pipes as the weather was getting colder and there was no guarantee the power would be back soon.  It was actually an epic handling of a difficult situation, and should be the subject of a future blog post, but it also took a lot out of me.

After getting back home from Vermont I planned to spend most of the next day on the couch watching TV and generally recovering from several relatively active days which had spiked my pain.  Of course, that was the day the TV decided to quit working, so my rest day involved a trip to the store during the height of the holiday shopping season, not to mention physically swapping the old TV with the new one.

I'm trying to be hopeful that the chemotherapy won't be as harsh on my digestive system as the radiation was, and that the initial treatment will bring more relief than side effects.  But I also have worries about how bad the side effects will get, and whether they will interfere with my ability to stick to the treatment plan.  Simply put, this is a tough fight, and I'm trying my best to give it my best shot and stay positive.