How low can you go

• Bloodwork and treatment at Siteman West County

My blood pressure was just as low today as it was before I started all of this mess. (It had always been on the low side, but then it's been all over the place in the last year.) Anyway, that's a good thing. I suppose that I have been feeling pretty "at peace" lately, not overwhelmingly stressed. Maybe it was our weekend trip to Branson. Everything there was definitely moving at a sloooooow pace.

There was a woman in my pod today just starting her first treatment of FOLFOX. I felt like I should have shared a bunch of words of wisdom with her, other than, "hello, good morning." The more I thought about it while I was sitting there, the more her body language was telling me that she wasn't in the mood to talk today anyway. Hopefully our paths will cross again on another Tuesday though and I can be a source of... something.

I'll take a bottle of happy

• Appointment with Dr. S, gyn

So a freak out last week led to an appointment today with my gyn (after a conversation about it with my oncologist's NP first). Anyway, based on today's appointment, there is nothing new for me to worry about. At this point it's hard to keep a count of my freak outs, but I think this was number 56,387.

I have been reading up about girlie parts though and there is a heavy involvement of the lymphatic system there. And coupled with fact that I had an ovarian met, it's not unreasonable for me to have concern.

The best part of the appointment though was getting to talk to my gyn, who I haven't since last Fall when I was still basically at the beginning of all of this crap. The joy he expressed in seeing me and hearing about how I'm doing actually brought me to tears in his office. We shook hands, he gave me a hi-5 and he just made me smile. If I could bottle up how I was feeling when I left today's appointment and carry that around with me, I totally would. It was just an infectious confidence and happiness. Two things that can be hard for anyone to find.

More numbers

So yesterday a new drug was approved by the FDA for the treatment of metastatic (stage IV) colon cancer. So scary to me to see all of the excitement about a drug that increases overall survival by an average of 1.8 months.

I should be talking about decades and years, not months. Makes me want to scream and feel mad and frustrated. I haven't experienced that kind of emotion much during the last year, but that is how I'm starting today. I suppose I should be happy about all of the treatments available and the continued research and dedication of those involved, but it's just hard.

"In the RECOURSE study, the median overall survival (OS) for patients with mCRC who received TAS-102 was 7.1 months compared with 5.3 months with placebo (HR, 0.68; P <.0001). The median progression-free survival (PFS) in the TAS-102 arm was 2 months versus 1.7 months with placebo..."

http://www.onclive.com/web-exclusives/fda-approves-tas-102-for-advanced-colorectal-cancer?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=OncLive&utm_campaign=Breaking_News_9-22-15

Fourteen/fourteenths

Anybody who knew me as child would not be surprised to see me working as an Accountant now. I was the kid who got excited about extra problems assigned to me as homework; and I had math competition medals alongside my sports trophies. Numbers came easily to me back then and they still do (for the most part.) So I have to laugh at myself when my mind turns everything into a math problem.

1 week of chemo pills at a time, 5 chemo pills a day, 35 chemo pills a week. With each dosage, I am 1/14th of the way through, 2/14ths of the way through (well 1/7th), etc. Then I hit the halfway point and I start counting down, 7 dosages left, 6 dosages left, etc. So this morning, the Tuesday at the end of a cycle, I have 0 dosages left and I am 14/14ths of the way through this cycle. As in 100% done with my chemo pills until next Tuesday evening. Making it into a math problem makes it comforting to me, in some sort of weird algebraic way.

Tomorrow represents 15 months since my diagnosis... half-way to the average survival time from diagnosis of 30-36 months. Hmmm. Sometimes, numbers are not my friend. Stupid math.

Warm blankets are good

• Bloodwork and treatment at Siteman West County

For the first time in awhile, I feel asleep in the treatment chair this morning. It's the warm blankets. Do I want one? Yes, please. Two? Oh sure, I'll have two. ZZZZZzzzzZZZzzz

It is such a beautiful day outside, that I had planned on rolling myself out to the patio and garden area... but the warm blankets had other plans.

Xeloda

http://chemocare.com/chemotherapy/drug-info/Xeloda.aspx

Women

So our DVR cut off the ending of Project Runway tonight and I had to pop onto Twitter to see if I could find out who was sent home. I searched for @ProjectRunway and up came a big group of tweets about tonight's episode. Surprisingly (or not, if you watched the episode), almost all of the tweets had to do with the behavior of the women's team in the episode. I think this tweet sums it up the best:

The crazy thing is that I wanted to say the exact same thing earlier tonight after my women's soccer game. And well, to be honest, after just about every one of my women's soccer games lately. When did become okay to be a bully?

My emotions run high on Xeloda. I know this. Hector knows this. More often than not, extended use of Xeloda involves starting an anti-depressant. I'm just not ready for that. So I do my best to keep my emotions in check. Sometimes it works and well, sometimes it doesn't. Tonight at my soccer game, one of my opponents was threatening one of my teammates, taunting her that she "deserved it" when she was getting fouled. In my head I'm thinking, am I just sensitive to this because I'm emotional or have we all just started accepting that kind of behavior as okay? Don't even get me started on the "woman" last month that brought one of my teammates to tears by bullying her about her weight.

I've already made the executive decision that I'm not going to play in this particular league anymore because it's just not enjoyable, so what can I do in my last couple of weeks there to make a difference. Anything?

I realize that this post has very little to do with cancer, but yet it does. Life is short. For all of us. Nobody is going to live forever. And you will be remembered by how you treat people. After all, you deserve it.

Rinse and repeat

• Bloodwork and treatment at Siteman West County

My neutrophils were low this morning so they had to call and get approval for my treatment, but other than that, everything went smoothly today at Siteman.