Day 75, Chemo Round 2

In my continuing quest to turn cancer treatment into a superhero origin story, I have a new ally: “genetically engineered hamster ovaries”.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Let me explain.

On the day after Christmas I got my second infusion of chemotherapy.  Not content to fill my veins with a cytotoxic substance, my oncologist also gave me a shot of another drug with the unpronounceable name Xgeva.  This is intended to “inhibit osteoclastic bone resorption”, which is fancy talk for interfering with the bone damage process caused by the cancer.  Of course, like all drugs put into my system I had to search the internet for more information.

The internet tells me that it’s a monoclonal antibody “produced in genetically engineered mammalian (Chinese hamster ovary) cells”.  Most likely, that means genetically engineered cells are grown in a petri dish, but I prefer to imagine mutant hamsters running around in a cage and oozing this substance out their furry follicles.  Periodically, scientists in lab coats would sheer the hamsters like tiny sheep and extract the Xgeva from the harvested fur.  When injected into me at a later date, the effect should be remarkably similar to adamantium added to the bones of Wolverine.

In practice, the effect is yet another source of fatigue and a temporary increase in pain.  It’s truly amazing how every cancer treatment seems to list fatigue as the most common side effect.  It also doesn’t help that I still have the remnants of a chest cold caught just before Christmas.

Generally speaking, chemo round 2 has been pretty similar to round 1, with the exception of no reaction during the infusion, and no signs of phlebitis in the week afterwards.  Also, since cutting off the ponytail my hair loss has been reduced to gradual thinning rather than losing huge handfuls of clumped hair.

But the fatigue is crushing at times.  After sleeping for 10 hours (or rather, attempting to sleep for that amount of time, with mixed success in actually sleeping), I wake up on a sunny morning and feel physically and spiritually exhausted.  I usually drag myself out of bed around 8:30 am so I can have breakfast and get my morning dose of prednisone in me.  Then I usually hang out on the couch watching TV and/or surfing the internet and playing mobile games.  It’s not a thrilling existence, but I do have my genetically engineered hamster ovaries to think about.

That said, I have gotten outside for a run or walk on six of the last seven days.  That quickly adds up to covering over 10 miles in a week.  In addition, many times in the evening I will become particularly fidgety and every time a commercial comes on the TV I get off the couch to make herbal tea, or put something away, or just get a tissue to blow my nose.  I’m not terribly good at acting bedridden all day long even when suffering fatigue.

I am very eager to see more progress in my energy and pain levels.  It’s particularly annoying since a couple weeks ago I was seeing meaningful progress and was beginning to plan what to do with my energy, enthusiasm, and newfound ability to move about.  But of course the side effects resurfaced, I caught a cold, and now have the side effects from round 2, so there hasn’t been any notable improvement in a couple weeks and that is frustrating.  The side effects for round 2 should be ebbing over the next few days, so hopefully I can set a new high water mark for feeling good.