The Trifecta...

On Monday (and after Tuesday), adding Temodar (another chemo) to the mix felt like it was going to make this fight much more difficult, but today gave me a different opinion. Before taking my first dose of Temodar in almost 4 years, I thought about my first 18 months of treatment, receiving Temodar for a week out of each month, and it was a manageable, but somewhat miserable 18 months. This time, I'll take it for 21 days in a row, while also receiving IV Avastin in Cincinnati next Monday (and still about every two weeks subsequently) and, on top of those two, radiation in Bloomington (thus, lots of travel is included in this mess too because I like to see my dog on the weekends, and I guess my family and local friends too...) every weekday for the next 18 weekdays except for Martin Luther King Day... not exactly how I planned to start the New Year (you can chuckle... I did).

I remember how I dreaded that week in each month that I voluntarily put poison (chemotherapy is derived from mustard gas if you didn't know - there are many interesting articles about it on the internet... check 'em out) in my body, but I knew that it was worth the nausea along with the other not so fun side effects, as I hoped to kill the blob. Unfortunately, it didn't quite get the job done. Now I'm drinking the same chemicals down again, knowing that many of the tumor cells left have a high probability of being resistant to the drug and also that 21 days in a row will probably feel much worse than one week out of a month (read on, there is a good reason). Temodar makes the radiation more effective by making the tumor cells more sensitive to damage caused by the protons. Moreover, Avastin helps to protect the healthy brain from necrosis (tissue death) caused by radiation. Thus, the combination of Temodar, Avastin, and proton beam radiation makes the ultimate Trifecta of tumor destruction (I am a nerd... I will not apologize for that cheesy statement).

Will I feel like total crap for the next few weeks? Probably, but it will be worth it. As we continue to blast this thing with protons and pump it full of poison, I'll continue to get headaches, at least a little nauseous, and who knows what else (balder on my already bald spot...), but like I said in an earlier post, I'd rather go for a walk in the rain than not go for a walk at all.

15 days of Radiation down, 18 to go;
3 days of Temodar down, 18 to go;
I have no clue how many more treatments of Avastin, but who's counting anyway?