Sunday, April 23

3 Cycles Done

Three cycles down and now I'm in the midst of where I feel the worst.  I had chemo Tuesday and Wednesday so I'm feeling the aftereffects of the bone pain and throat pain.  Last night was hard to sleep but another day closer to being done with the pain.  :)

On Thursday I had an MRI of my face and neck and we went back on Friday for the results.  I didn't look at the initial MRI back in February because I was too nervous when we first met with the oncologist, so I saw my February MRI and my new MRI for the first time on Friday.  The MRI taken in February was 2.5 weeks pre-treatment so it wasn't even at my "worst".  So I saw that MRI for the first time on Friday... the tumor was huge.  It was invading my whole cheek, nose, eye... my lymph nodes were completely swollen.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  But looking at my newest MRI- about two months later from the initial- everything around my nose, eyes, and lymph nodes is completely gone. I still have some residual tumor on the soft tissue of my sinus, but things are looking pretty good.  I still have 11 cycles and 30ish radiation treatments, but it's nice to see the progress in black and white.

I do tend to make myself nervous though... after the first cycle I had a lot of success, but by about the 3rd week I convinced myself that my eye was beginning to swell again.  In my second cycle I had more success, but I convinced myself that there was regrowth because I had some different numbness by my nose and lip.  And now in my third cycle I've convinced myself that I have a lot of regrowth right where it all started.  It sounds ridiculous because I just got the great MRI plus things react to the chemo in different ways, but I feel like there's a new lump again.  But I also know- just like the past two cycles- I'm probably being overly worrisome.

On another note... the baby is doing great.  Our scan last week showed a baby at about 1lb 12oz.  I was just under 25 weeks at that point.  The baby is a mover and a shaker.  :)  I took my glucose tolerance test too and bombed it.  That was on Tuesday last week and I haven't heard back from my doctor, so I'm wondering if they're letting it slide for a little out of pity?  Ha.  I was 40 points over the maximum, but I also take several doses of steroids during my Week 1 of every cycle which can impact the levels.

Either way, I have about 9 weeks until delivery day.  We have zero done for this baby.  As in I haven't taken a single belly picture, we haven't thought about names, the crib is in the attic, we have no car seat... we can't even fit 5 seats in the van until we by new boosters for the big kids.  It stinks to go through the pregnancy like this, but we're really in survival mode right now.


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