Chemo #3

Yesterday was chemo treatment no. 3, and so far not much different from the others. I feel about 90-95% today. I'm not quite ready to bite a tiger, but perhaps gum a kitten. (Sorry BC, I wimped on your alternative punch line; this is a family-ish blog.) Spring is sproinging, which helps immensely. I may even get up to VT tomorrow to help clear out the house for a tenant.

Dr. D. is pretty enthusiastic about my progress and chemo tolerance. He confirmed that (as far as he can tell) what's left of the big lymph node is now just scar tissue. He is now talking about the minimum number of treatments, 6, instead of 6-8. Yay!! Said my tolerance and lack of need for nausea drugs was "bordering on eerie" (I paraphrase), but also that older patients apparently are less sensitive to that than younger ones. Hmm. Hmph. OK. Blood counts better than ever -- all within range for a non-chemo-patient.

I get another scan for cats in about 20 days, to see if insides and outsides match. At the end of the 6 treatments, they may do a PET scan (like cat scan, but includes dogs & goldfish).

Dr. D. reiterated the conundrum, that the more aggressive lymphomas (like what mine transformed to) are more susceptible to nuking by chemo than the indolent ones. Good? Bad? Indifferent? Who knows? The goal remains to knock the disease back to "indolent", but they really can't tell if they have done that. Apparently being able to determine success immediately after treatment is the pot of gold, and some really sensitive measurements are being tested right now that look for DNA of the cancerous cells in concentrations of 1 ppb or less. !