Results = a long road ahead.

Yesterday I had my appointment with Dr. Glenn. There was to much of emotion and drugs involved that I chose to update everyone today.  We first met with Renee, Dr. Glenn NP. She was very nice.  She went over my past history and all that good stuff. She explain that after my appointment with them she would perform a bone marrow biopsy to make sure my marrow is clean.  Then Dr. Glenn came in and we all sat down.  The results from the biopsy on Friday came back stating that I do Hodgkin's Lymphoma once again. They are staging it at 2b/3a just due to some small lymph nodes below my diaphragm. This really didn't come as a shock to me. I was excepting that this is what the results would say. We then went into detail what my next few months will be like. I was first thinking I would be given the ABVD chemo, which is what I go last time. I quickly learned I was very wrong. I will be taking a chemo drug called ICE. Its a three day treatment. ABVD was just a 3 hours infusion and then I went home.  The first day of ICE I will just go in for a few hours drip some yummy juices in my body and then go home.  The 2nd day I will have to stay over night, as the drugs drip ever so slowly. 3rd day I will go home. I will get 2 to 3 treatments of ICE. Then they will start harvesting my stem cells ( most likely Christmas week) After that I get a few weeks break from the doctors. Around the end of January beginning of February  I will be admitted to the hospital anywhere from 3-6 weeks depending how well I do. In there, I will get high doses of chemo therapy for the first week. The 2nd week they will start giving me back my stem cells they took away from me in December  This whole processes is called an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant. It wipes out my immune system completely and then they give me healthy stem cells to get me healthy again. They are hoping by doing all this I won't relapse and be cured of cancer FOR GOOD! I start all this Wednesday of next week.

It was just Sandy and I taking in all this information. I don't know about him but I was overwhelmed. When I was first diagnosed back when I was 18, I don't remember being so overwhelmed.... and that's probably because I left it all up to my mom.( Mom your AWESOME!!!!)  I did have to ask the famous question of "will I loose my hair?" Because, when I went through chemo last time not a single hair fell out when it was supposed to. Dr. Glenn simply looked at me and said " Yes, I'm afraid your hair won't be able to handle this treatment we will be giving you." I simple replied "Well, at least I will save money not having hair cuts for awhile"  Don't be fooled though, when she told me, I was very sad! The topic of babies came up and she informed my very politely that there could be a very HIGH chance that I could not have any children. This news quickly made me forget about my dumb hair. No babies? I have to fight for my life and then I still get affected by this dumb cancer by not having no babies? Well I just can't think that way. I'm going to be positive and think that after all this crap I will still have a CHANCE to have them. After I met with my doctor I was moved to the lovely procedure room where they preformed that bone marrow biopsy.  They gave me drugs so I don't remember much. I do remember the pain. Ya, I couldn't forgot that. But after that EVERYTHING was a blur  Sandy was SO very kind to have captured some "moments" of mine. Here is something that will lighten your day :) Enjoy