Last round of PCV started, missing work?

Hello all,
After a 2 week delay, my blood counts recovered and I started the last round of chemo. This last couple weeks have been horribly stressful, I soo want to be done with this.In an effort to start cleansing my body of all these chemicals, I stopped taking one of the prescribed sleep aids, amitriptyline. There was a possible interaction with the procarbazine chemo, so I would go for two weeks without it anyway, so now its stopped. The Dr. said I could quit it any time.  I also stopped taking zantac for stomach acid. I was taking this daily for years, without it I would usually wake in the night and have to walk downstairs in my undies and take some tums. I'll take it If I have something I know will disagree, like a beef sammy with peppers, but not everyday. That leaves me with the anti-seizure lamotrogine and Xanax. It will be a while, if ever that I can get off these. Enough technical details already.

This early retirement not going back to work concept is hard to swallow. My self-worth has taken a hit in the gut. I find myself looking down at me feet and looking back thinking, that was it? That was my career? I aimed too low at the onset and met my career goal when I was like 25. After that, I started seeing what engineering management looked like beyond that and was not really interested going there. I has aspirations of starting my own business, but what the business should 'do' eluded me. I did take a stab at one time, but that fizzled out. I ended up doing about the same work for 20+ years. If I ever get back to work, I am going to do it with a much different perspective.

But there is a silver lining,

Its very clear to to me now what they say about how one will ever look back on their life and be remembered for what they did at work. On the contrary, with all the time I have with the family now, what I missed while doing those 60 hour work-weeks is staggering. The awareness I have now about what each family member is feeling and dealing with is enlightening. I am feeling that I spent most of my life running down a dark hall, occasionally pausing to peer through a door to 'see' my family. I essentially visited with my family, never taking the time for feel with them. Now one kid is off at college, another a junior. I had to keep the money coming, had to keep health insurance, had to be a key player at work for job security, had to get that project done on time. I do not think I was born with much ability to emotionally connect with people. I can write a book about all the relationships I screwed up. Work provided a convenient way to suppress this shortfall in my personality. Not surprisingly, 20 years suppression did not make me a better person, but this last year surrounded by my family has.

Next MRI is mid-October. I'll be done with chemo by then, and should be back to the watch and wait with a MRI every 4 months.

Fall is my favorite season, get out enjoy it.

-Ed

Last chemo cycle delayed

Hello all,
I found out on Friday at the oncologist's office that my last chemo cycle had to be delayed. One of my blood count readings, platelets, had fallen too low.  Its supposed to be 140 - 400, and the results over each cycle have gone from 199 down to 72 today. The reading has not gone UP over this time, I wonder how long its is going to take for my body to recover to get the last cycle started.  Holding off the next cycle was mixed news for me. On one hand, I have been feeling so horrible that I was dreading starting another cycle. Each cycle has gotten progressively worse. The 3-week 'off time' in the cycle is no longer a relief, I now feel miserable every day. On the other hand, I wanted to get this over with.

One twinkle in this dark cloud of chemotherapy is that I lost over 20 pounds since I started in December. I am almost back at my weight from high school. I did not loose any weight when I was on the Temodar chemo for 19 months, but consider I was also working full time. Unfortunately none of my clothes fit anymore. My pants are usually hanging off my ass, but I think this is in style these days.

I also talked with the social worker at the cancer center about the possibility of going back to work. She cautioned against this idea sighting that she sees a lot of men in my position push to get back to work because they are trying to get back to their 'normal life'. She says 'Normal life' has changed after the cancer progressed. There is a reason why social security deems this a permanent disability. The disease almost always continues to progress, putting me right back where I am today with more surgery and treatment. She says to enjoy life, nobody ever looks back and wishes they worked more.

This perspective was a breath of fresh air as it lifted a lot of worries about going back to work. I have shown that I can muddle through some technical tasks, but I find myself dazed and confused a lot. My son pointed out the other day that I was scaring him when I could not figure out a problem he was showing me from school. I was not confused trying to solve the problem, rather just trying to understand what the problem was. Several unspoken instances like this have occurred, all adding to my doubt that I would be able to perform in the professional world. It seems that I cannot keep things strait anymore, not only in the sense of is that picture hanging strait, but logically keeping and being able to use associations in my head. After I spoke to the social worker, I spoke briefly with the APN at the oncologist office. She said that they would consider me disabled from here on out. So for now I am going to stop worrying about going back to work and concentrate on my health and happiness.

While I was talking to the APN about my constant state 'misery', she suggested that I try taking 2mg of Decadron in the morning. I'll give this a shot, but frankly, I am sick of chasing problems with drugs. One of my face book cancer group friends has a blog, Brain new beginning, where she describes doing a detox. Sounds like a good idea to me.


My next MRI is in October, I'll update you then.