Nate vs. Tiny Cells Blog

I like quiet weeks, because it means i’m not running back and forth up to the Huntsman center all the time waiting on doctors.  Just dealing with the chemo after effects as usual.  I have to be grateful so far, there have been bouts of feeling awful and barely being able to function, but no really bad episodes this last time -knock on wood-.  The pins/needles electric shock that I get when touching anything remotely cold or just walking outside in cool air has gotten a lot more common for some reason, but it’s more annoying than painful (unless you keep touching whatever it is).

Trixy let me know it was her that sent the exotic jerky.  This stuff is wild and probably packs more punch than I prefer in my jerky, but it’s been fun trying them all out and letting people sample them to see their reactions.  The flavors – Garlic Chili Pepper, Sweet Chipotle, Chili Lime, Pineapple Orange, Basil Citrus.  I must say the meat is probably the best jerky meat i’ve ever had, soo tender it falls apart very easily.  The jerky’s with the chili and chipotle are great at first, then they send you running for milk or some other extinguisher of fiery flames, yow!  The pineapple orange you would think to be the weirdest tasting, but it actually works on some level and is mellow compared to the others.  Thanks for the jerky, Karen!

But if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all is what i’ve always been told, and this new chemo system has just been rough, and it’s not fun to hear constant whining.  On the bright side the chemo yesterday wasn’t quite as bad as it’s been, fewer chills and pain, but that’s probably because I upped my pain pills to be ready for it.  The electric chill side effects of this new chemo are really strange.  It’s like when your foot falls asleep, really bad, and when it starts coming around you get strong pins and needle sensations, it’s like that but add a strange sort of electric feel to it.  Something as small as a cold breeze blowing on you can activate the sensation, and walking on tile/wood/cement at home will definitely send you scrambling off it.

I had to have my drain replaced before chemo yesterday too.  Nothing had been coming out of it (skin had healed around  the entrance of it sealing it up), so he yanked the old tube out and put a new one in, a lot deeper.  He sucked out some pus again but it wasn’t nearly as much as the first time, so it is clearing up, that’s nice.  No sedative for it because I had eaten earlier (wasn’t told I was going to have this done), it’s really strange that I don’t mind seeing blood and fluids come gushing out of me these days. A while ago what I saw yesterday draining would have made me pass out, now I find it fascinating on some level and ask a lot of annoying questions of the doctors and nurses.  One nurse stared at me afterwards puzzled and said “Hrmmm, no one ever does this without sedation let alone sit there asking questions.  Didn’t the insertion and stitches hurt?”,  It’s strange what you get used to.

Big thanks again to our neighbors the Langston’s for providing us dinner, when we got home it was such a long day with that drain surgery thrown in, we were literally running from 7 in the morning to 7 at night, which is hard when you’re on chemo, and to not have to worry about dinner is wonderful.  My sister and brother Julie and Cam watched the kids during this long day, can’t thank them enough, you guys are awesome.  Keep the prayers coming, I have a feeling this new stuff is going to work a bit better despite being so tough on the body.  Love you all!

BTW, thanks to whoever sent the strange jerky in the mail (pineapple orange?! chili lime?) going to be interesting trying this stuff.

trying two new chemicals for chemo now, and I didn’t think I’d be saying this, but I think I prefer the previous stuff!  About two thirds of the way into getting infused with these new chemicals I was feeling pretty awful – major chills, pain, nausea, etc. that never happened with the old stuff, atleast not immediately, usually took a day or two to slowly kick in, but this stuff let me know it was there and going right off.  On top of that, I’m not done with it, they’ve left a bulb shaped container of one of the chemicals hooked up to my port, and it’s slowly dripping into my system for the next couple days, so now I have the drain and this chemo bulb that I need to worry about.  Unpleasant and awkward new system to say the least.  Looks like I have another 3-4 weeks before this drain gets removed, and it’s more than likely it’s going to need some minor surgery to adjust it in the meantime because the doctor was pretty certain it’s going to clog up slowly.

and after it hits me that i’m stuck with this drain for several more weeks (months? guhhhh), a package shows up in the mail lifting my spirits.  Thanks Neil, for picking up SW:TOR for me, the new Star Wars multiplayer game for computers, gives me something to do during downtime when I need to get my mind off things.

The interventional radiologist wants to see how well things are draining with this drain tube in.  Most of the time it does nothing, just sits there, occasionally it’ll eek out a little liquid for a minute and I get to write down exactly how much and at what time.  For some dumb reason I had it in my head that I was getting the drain taken out during the CT scan, it would have done it’s job after a week, which has already been plenty long and annoying for me. But my wife reminded me this doctor mentioned he likes to leave the drains in atleast 4 to 6 weeks, and there’s zero chance i’m getting it out so soon. AIGH!!!!!!

They poked the drain tube into the necrotic middle part of the main tumor today (the part that looked like it had ooze in it), and yah, it was indeed filled with liquid.  A lot of liquid.  They drained what seemed like half a gallon of peanut butter colored pus from the area.  Yuck.  It’s a good thing they got it out, that ooze could have gotten really bad really quick, it was already probably adding to my pain and sickness.

I have a drain tube hanging out of me now, it runs down to a big collection bag, and the collection bag has this hard formed plastic at the top of it to help pump out liquid, and i’m supposed to wear it for a week. The tube is causing a lot of pain, he gave me a new type of pain pill to deal with it, kind of funny that I traded one pain for another. This collection bag is so large it’s nearly impossible to hide and quite awkward, not going to be fun at work / stores / etc.  Not even one day with this thing and it’s already annoying to deal with.

It looks like the directed chemo embolization did a fairly good job of killing the tumor where it was at.  The middle of the large tumor is now fairly dead and necrotic and not a lot of activity on the edges of the large tumor.  On the down side, regular chemo doesn’t seemed to have worked that well, the small tumors around different parts outside the liver were mostly untouched, and again, those are the ones I need to get destroyed.  They’re not sure what’s inside the dying middle of the large tumor, they’re guessing it’s bile and pus and other assorted goo, so tomorrow they’re going to jam a drain in my liver again and let it ooze on out so that it doesn’t turn into infected goo.  And I get to live with a tube coming out again until it’s drained nicely.  They’re also going to change my regular chemo chemicals to to a different set that hopefully works better.  This new stuff i’ll have to keep hooked to my port for 2 days in a row. It starts with sitting in the infusion room for the first five hours, then I take a little orb home the next two days and let it trickle in to the port, when it’s done Kimberly gets to unhook that nasty metal prong that’s stuck in my port and de-prep the port.  Hope it’s worth all this extra work.

That’s the fancier CT scan where I have to drink this big bottle of nasty tasting mildly radioactive sugar (how do they manage to make a sugar drink gross??),  sit in a dark room for an hour (under camera observation), then get scanned.  Sounds pretty simple but they usually manage to drag it out for half the day or so.  Still, as far as scans go, i’d rate it as one of the better ones to have to deal with, other than the time involved.  It should let us know how well the chemo and chemo embolization worked, crossing my fingers that we did some good damage to the cancer this time.

Get there around 7am in the morning, knowing full well we’ll be sitting around doing nothing most the morning, which is indeed what happened.  Got my port hooked up, got gowned up and waited my turn for the procedure room.   I think around 10 or so they finally got me in to the room, get me all sanitized (don’t ask), and halfway put me out.  Why they halfway put me out i’m not sure.  I vaguely  remember poking my head up half a dozen times during the procedure just to get a quick peak of what’s going on and being gruffly told to “Put your head back down Mr. Davidson, there’s nothing to see.”   And being asked a couple times just how bad it hurts when they jab here.   So why did you leave me kind of awake in the first place?

Afterwards i’ll have to say I had and still have some of the worst nausea i’ve had in a long time.  Yuck.  They gave me a few drugs, they sort of helped, but not really.  And for some reason it feels like they punched the top of my leg repeatedly, lots of bruising on my waist and there’s a massive wad of bloody gauze there.  My right thumb is completely numb, i’m not sure how on earth my thumb would have been involved in this (?). I have pain but it’s a different kind of pain, feeling really crappy and sick to my stomach. Completely wiped out of all energy too, could sit around taking naps all day.  Thanks for all the support everyone.  We had a couple meals brought to us, and Grandma Olsen, Aunt Valerie, and Aunt Marci watched the kids for us too.  Always a great burden off our shoulders.

Here’s a mildly graphic picture of the bruising they left on my leg (point of entry) from the chemo embolization, it actually looks pretty good at this point because at one time the entire area was purple and blue:

Chemo Embolization bruising

Wow, 5 in the morning really does exist beyond just being a theoretical bit of time.  Off we go.