Chemo Update

I had a blood check today and all my counts were good. My doctor said the tumors on my collarbone seem to have shrunk and the other bumps and lumps around my chest seem to have "not gotten worse". All this is from just feeling the skin's surface.

For a better look at how this chemo's working, I'll have a chest X-ray on the 24th, just before my next dose of chemo is due. If the tumors in my lungs have shrunk, we'll go ahead with another cycle of the Liposomal Adriamycin, plus Herceptin which we added to the mix for my last dose. The Adriamycin didn't seem to be doing much on its own so we added the Herceptin again. So technically, this is my sixth chemo regimen in two years.

I've been on continuous pain medication now for over a week, so I'm not feeling much pain, only tightness in the chest when I breathe in deeply. I'm still coughing and losing my breath when I exert my lungs in any way.

I asked my doctor again about the tumors in my brain and whether we should be doing something about them. She said they're easier to take care of than the lungs and she's mostly worried about the tumors in my lungs, even more so than the liver, which had several tumors the size of golf balls the last time we checked.

It seems to me that dying of cancer in the lungs would be the least painful way to go, compared to cancer in the brain, liver, or bones. I imagine I'd just run out of breath one day and slip peacefully away. But it probably doesn't work that way.