Blogging in B Minor

I’m glad the holidays are here and I just finished the first week on in chemo #2 on Wednesday night so last night I slept much better – yesterday I felt better and today I’m feeling pretty good actually. I don’t have to go back on until next Thursday night so I know I will enjoy Thanksgiving dinner! I’m going to see this through to the end of this second cycle. At that point, I’ll see what the next step is based on how I feel. Again, the standard of care is the 5-day pulse. What I am doing by being on a regimen of 7-days on / 7-days off repeated twice monthly is somewhat experimental. There are studies based on small sample sizes that show increased survival rates – the studies out there are based on taking it every day. That just isn’t in the cards for me and that is clear based on my struggles here.   We decided to half-way in between.   Normal survival rates for a Grade 3 Oligoastrocytoma are 3-5 years.  Temodar on a daily regimen based on these studies (small sample sizes < 500 patients) and in GBM patients only resulted in doubling their survival rate – 6-10 years if extrapolated to a Grade 3.  It’s a bit of a stretch because again, the study was focused on Grade 4 GBM patients.  Further digressing, Grade 4 and Grade 3 gliomas are typically treated the same – with malignant therapies.  So we settled in between.  If this isn’t something that will square up with my desired quality of life, we will decide if I need to go to a 5-day pulse after weighing everything out.

I’m still trying to eat as best as I can – I call it more pushing the food in – food hasn’t tasted that great. I’m going out to dinner on Saturday night and I’m hoping that by being off for a few days it will be nice. Haven’t been out to dinner for a few months – have to try it out though. I’m also going to start juicing I think. I was talking to a friend and her son went through cancer treatment and they did a lot of juicing for him – the gist of what she was saying is when you feel as lousy as you can feel while on chemo and you don’t feel like eating, you can juice and drink the equivalent of 2 or 3 apples quite easily whereas you would never accomplish the same by way of eating. Anyway, I appreciated her input and enjoyed catching up with her.

Some comments were deleted from the blog for some reason. Not a big deal but I noticed one I posted recently had an issue. Anyway, if you notice anything off just email me.

That’s it for now…

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