And so it ends...

First I apologize for not posting here in quite some time but... well... I didn't feel like it. Today I had surgery removing my central-line which marks the end of my treatment (aside from the occasional check up). For this reason I am officially retiring this blog. Thanks for reading.Hoping never to post here again,Ian Blais

Episode 2: Return of the Blogging

Sorry I haven't updated this blog in a while but I have been somewhat distracted by various things. The result of the scans is that I will be going through four more cycles of chemotherapy before hopefully starting radiation. I am in the middle of the first of these four and it was going rather well up until the hospitalization (always on the second Friday of the cycle! what the crap!) I am currently sitting in an uncomfortable hospital bed being monitored after a blood transfusion and am attempting to discover what my odds are of getting out in time to give out candy for Halloween tonight (me n' Alex have a tradition to uphold). I am still waiting for the doctors to show up to discuss my case but it sounds like I have an okay shot at getting out by fourish if I am lucky.Fingers crossed!Ian Blais

Another cycle down...

Well... my counts are back up after my fourth chemo cycle and it was relatively uneventful. There was one unanticipated hospital visit for a blood transfusion and something called TPA but I didn't have to stay overnight so it was more of an inconvenience than anything. On thursday I have a full day of scans (yay! more radiation!) for reevaluation that will determine the remaining course of my treatment. I'll let you know how that goes when the results come in.Ian Blais

The wheel is ever turning...

Well... I'm back in the hospital for the start of my chemo cycle. Nothing improves a monday like having your body pumped full of hazardous chemicals! Hopefully this stay will be completely uneventful and I will be out on wednesday. I'll keep ya posted!Ian Blais

I Made It!

The labs are in and my immune system is back! This is the first chemo cycle that I have made it though without ending up in the hospital for an infection. I now get to enjoy a week of not feeling like crap before going in for more chemo! [insert celebratory remark here]Ian Blais

So far so good...

Well, I have been home for a little over a week now and have thus far successfully avoided any complications. My immune system is currently running on empty (or pretty damn close) so my main concern is staying away from anything that... well... just anything. I have started giving myself Neupogen shots again (fun, fun...) to bring my immune system back up and am coming up on the last dose of prednisone (see: most disgusting thing in the universe). If I can successfully avoid an infection I can enjoy a further week and a half of not being in the hospital before my next cycle.Finger and toes crossed.Ian Blais

A Brief Reprieve

I have finally been released from the hospital after two weeks. Well actually I was released yesterday but my damn laptop decided to stop working. Now that it is fixed however I can once again use the interwebs. I will be returning to the hospital on monday for the start of my next cycle but I should only be there for three days. In the meantime I will be experiencing the joys of having a normal bed once more. I ask that you now join my penguin in celebrating with the happy dance:

Honey, I Shrunk the Tumor!

Greetings Blog Followers!As you all know (or at least those of you that made it through the end of that first post without bleeding from the eyes) yesterday I got my re-evaluation scans. As a quick run-down these consist of a CT Scan (quick, easy, takes about ten minutes) and a PET Scan (long, boring, and infinitely more enjoyable on Ativan). Well, folks... we got the results from those scans today and the results are quite blog worthy indeed. When I was first diagnosed back at the beginning of July I got these same scans and the Mediastinal (Upper-Chest) Mass they discovered measured a whopping 1865.4cm³ (15.3 x 9.6 x 12.7cm). As of yesterdays scan the mass is now 245.4cm³ (4.1 x 6.3 x 9.5cm). For those of you that don't have a calculator handy that means that the tumor has shrunk to an incredible... wait for it... wait for it... 13% of its original size! The radiologist report described it as a "Dramatic Improvement" which according to my primary doctor is something that you never see on a radiology report. Clearly this can only mean one thing: I have developed a mutant healing factor! (no claws... yet).In other news I have been told that I will hopefully be getting to spend at least the weekend before my next chemo cycle at home though I am hopeful for longer. My blood pressure actually went as normal as 124/76 (trust me... big deal to these guys...). And I had a miniature pizza party in my hospital room today as a celebration for my gums finally healing the rest of the way. So all in all, as days in the hospital go, today could be considered pretty good.See ya on the comment board,Ian Blais

And So It Begins...

OK so this is my new medical blog for keeping friends, family, and weird strangers who just feel like reading it up to date on my condition. My name is Ian Blais. If you didn't already know that you are probably in the wrong place. This is the obligitory Gi-Monstrous first blog post to bring everything up to the present day. After this I will post whenever something happens that I feel is worth posting.Here is the first part of my cancer story... Done NARRATIVE STYLE! (yes, english teachers, this is the first and only time I intend to use anything you taught me)Aaaaaaaaaand..... go!I was diagnosed with Stage III-B Hodgkins Lymphoma somewhere in the vicinity of July 6, 2009. This came about almost purely by accident. I was feeling somewhat ill (the usual kind: cough, tiredness, other cold symptoms, etc.) so I went to see the doctor. Went through the usual mumbo-jumbo, described my symptoms, got prescribed some type of antibiotic thingy and was just about to be on my way when I asked (not having thought of it until just this moment.) “Hey, maybe you can tell me what this lumpy thing at the base of my neck is”. After feeling it for a few seconds she got kind of a funny look on her face and said “Oh, you should probably have an X-Ray”. So we got that scheduled for later in the day, went home (to grab the form for the X-Ray that Bekah needed anyway. Two birds with one stone and all that.), picked up the prescriptions at Walgreens and left for the Childrens Hospital Outpatient Branch. I then proceeded to sit in a room with a goofy mask on for a while because apparently swine flu fear was in full force and I had a cough (i coughed towards the desk lady while she was handing me the mask... just 'cause I could). After getting my X-Ray and Bekah getting hers we signed out and went home. Slightly after this I figured “What the hell, I'll go ahead and take the first dose of that stuff now”. As I was doing this my mom got a call. Quite soon thereafter I was told that I didn't need to take the medicine that had been prescribed (Oops). I was then informed that the reason for this was that they had discovered a mass in the upper left part of my chest...Oh...Despite what you learn from TV dramas it only took about 2 seconds for the shock to wear off. Or maybe I'm just that awesome; I guess we will never know (or will we?). I packed my essentials into my backpack (toothbrush, spare set of clothes, half the electronic content of the house, etc.) grabbed something to drink and got in the car. We dropped Bekah off at a friends house and headed to the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital (the main branch this time). Much of the car ride was spent assuring my mom that I was fine and that I wasn't worrying as she seemed to have that aspect of the procedure well covered. The rest of the ride was spent playing with my arms since I had just discovered that if I flexed my left shoulder backwards I could actually feel the mass they had discovered press forward (cool or creepy: you decide!).We went in through the emergency department and I sat watching spongebob while my mom waited in line. At some point during this time my dad showed up. I was kind of surprised he got there that quickly until I remembered that he only worked like fourteen seconds away. He asked how I was doing. I said fine. More spongebob. Right around the time the godforsaken sponge started singing (whew!) somebody came back and took us to an ER Examination Room (Translation: broom closet sized alcove with a curtain). After asking the same twenty questions two or three times and taking blood pressure and temperature they they took us to an emergency room (Translation: same as the first one but with a door and a broken clock). They then proceeded to ask the same questions as in the first room several hundred times. I am not going to list those questions here but if you are curious about them feel free to break a limb in the vicinity of this hospital.We then proceeded to sit there for several hours as they came in and and asked and re-asked every question conceivable within the human language. They drew some blood to test for the stuff that it could be and examined me fourteen thousand eight hundred and seventy two times (approximately). They said that they were going to get a CT scan for a better look at the mass in my chest and that I had to drink two bottles of this nasty contrast fluid before that. After choking that down (and discovering some unpleasant bathroom related side-effects) I got my scan and went back to the room. Eventually some oncologists (cancer docs) came in and assured me that they were good at their jobs (I certainly damn well hope so!) and told us that based on all the crap they had discovered they were guessing that it was Hodgekins lymphoma. After lots of talking that I didn't really listen to they finally got me moved to a real room. (YAAY!) But the bed still sucked (booo...).The next day they put me on a stretcher and took me down to my three-in-one surgery special event. They told me they would be removing a lymph node (the thingies with cancer), biopsying my bone marrow (again to check for cancer) and installing a c-line (tube thingy for drugs) into my chest. They tell you that the surgeon will count down from ten after giving you the drugs and you will be asleep before he finishes but apparently they gave me the really good stuff because I don't even remember going into the room. I woke up what felt like six minutes later (in reality it was probably several hours) in the recovery room and sat there not able to move but also apparently too stoned to particularly care. It took probably ten minutes after that before I was able to move an arm and a further fifteen before I could control what direction it went. They wheeled me back up to my room and I went back to sleep.When I eventually woke up I was informed that the biopsies had confirmed that I had Hodgkins Lymphoma and that it was in Stage III-B (the stages have something to with which body parts it is in). After alot of talking about what this meant that all kind of blurred together they gave us some papers outlining the treatment. I apparently had a slight fever after the surgery and they started me on an antibiotic called vancomycin. Several friends visited at one point and I explored the possibilities of the patient room-service menu. On thursday I got a PET scan. For those of you who have never had one it is a torturous procedure involving not being allowed to eat for several hours before being injected with some kind of radioactive sugar stuff and being told that you have to hold perfectly still for like an hour straight. Somehow I managed to avoid moving for the procedure and then proceeded to have some variety of nervous breakdown directly upon making it back to the room (I think the radioactive sugar stuff was screwing with my head). I informed them quite clearly that I would not be having another one of those scans without sedation and they agreed. Blood tests revealed that my kidneys were screwed up, probably from some combination of the vancomycin and the contrast material. I sat around and did basically nothing for several day while they tried to fix that.Finally on monday (after my kidneys were working again) they started me on my chemotherapy. They started pumping me full of a ridiculous number of chemicals to do lots of different things that I don't remember. All I know for sure is that I pretty much slept for the next several days. The major chemicals all went in in the first several days. After that I kind of settled into a rather monotonous pattern of taking disgusting pills and reading comic books on my laptop. I got to do a few four hour at a time home visits which I spent eating steak, building an ikea dresser, eating wings, and generally being obsessed over by the dogs. Finally on the 21st (two weeks after my admission) they decided that I was ready to go home and do the whole out-patient thing. They gave me my eight thousand perscriptions, taught me how to do my neupogen injections, complained about my blood pressure and finally discharged me. WooooHooo!I spent three glorious nights sleeping in a bed that didn't horribly suck. And then... Tragedy Struck! (Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!) I got an infection involving mouth sores from hell. This infection happened while I was neutropenic (no immune system) so I had to go back to the hospital (DAMN!) and get treated for it. Unfortunately it was evening so we had to go in through the ER. Similar process to before: get asked stupid questions, get moved to same tiny room (clock still broken). I basically sat there in pain unable to move my mouth while other people talked until finally someone said that magic word: Morphine. They gave me a syringe of the stuff through my C-line and within thirty seconds I could move my mouth again. I immediately resolved to build a shrine to whoever discovered this wonderful elixir (I'm still working on it). After a while they moved me back up to the oncology ward. I ended up next door to the room I was in last time. The room was exactly the same but with one critical difference: The bed actually had a mattress worth sleeping on! After several times giving me morphine injections the usual way I got the option of getting a PCA machine. This is an automated medicine pump that has a little button on it so I can give myself morphine (awesome). On a side note... It turns out that morphine can give you some pretty frickin screwed up dreams. Like the the kind of dreams where you wake up wondering if the laws of physics still apply. Needless to say the next day i decided to lay off of the button just a bit.My next surprise comes several days into this stay. At some point I decide to take a shower. I put my head under the water and I wash my hair and everything seems quite normal. Then I open my eyes. Oh... the shower now has a carpet! I continue to run the water over my hair as more and more of it accumulates in the already clogged drain. I guess its a good thing I didn't do it at home. By the time I get out of the shower it looks like Chewbacca was playing strip poker and I have less hair on my head than Britney Spears after a meltdown. A couple of days later on the 27th (and several days sooner that the doctors expected I might add) I got to go home again. I spent one incredible week with no doctors poking me, no medications, and no infections destroying important body parts. Trust me, boredom was never more exciting.The following monday I had to go in for my next round of chemotherapy but this one was considerably shorter. I only had to go in for three day while they give me the really toxic stuff and then I get to go home and suffer through the pills myself. It is relatively uneventful. I sleep for the first two days, wake up and order room service on the third. After a few test and such they send me home. I take my pills and get visits by the home care people to draw blood for tests. Nothing out of the ordinary. On the 3rd I go in for my “Day 8” Chemo. Basically I sit in a tiny clinic room for several hours while they give me a few toxic chemicals. After the usual complaints about my blood pressure they let me go home.Over the next few day my immune system starts trending downwards as expected. Tensions begin to rise... Can he make it without another infection? Will he be able to stay home this time? Will he continue asking hypothetical questions to people who can't actually hear him? Is the suspense killing you yet? I'll go ahead and put you out of your misery: I didn't make it.That next friday started rather normally. I got up, went to the bathroom, did my meds, did my mouthcare stuff, ate breakfast, and settled down to a nice long day of doing nothing. The first several hours of this picturesque vision went quite well indeed. I watched some my tv shows I had recorded the night before, scheduled a few cheesy movies to record later, chatted with some friends on the internet and read some old Arthur C. Clarke stories. Sometime between noon and one I noticed my back was getting slightly sore. No biggie, they said the neupogen injections I was giving myself might cause some bone pain. I popped an oxycodone and went back to what I was doing. After an hour or two it occurred to me that the pain meds hadn't ever taken effect. Strange. Well as soon as I was allowed I took another dose and this time watched the clock a bit closer. Same thing... no effect. By this time the pain was growing gradually more noticeable and I decided to try laying on the floor to stretch my back a bit. That was a mistake... apparently laying down makes this slight pain feel about three times worse. Every other type of stretch I try has either no effect or way too much of one. I give up on this course of action. I figure I'll just go back to my reading while I'm waiting for the four hour mark when I can take more pain meds figuring maybe I'll try a bigger dose. Ouch. Apparently while I was trying other things I missed the fact that sitting down now has the same effect as laying down. I ignore it for a while and do some reading but eventually get fed up with it. I'll just wander around the house for a while until I can take my meds again. So I go and make a snack, watch people play the wii, and pretty much meander around doing things that don't involve sitting. After a while this degenerates into just standing in the kitchen doing nothing. Around the three and a quarter hour mark I give up and take the pills anyway. I also notice that my stomach has been feeling rather funny so I go to the bathroom but it doesn't particularly help. After a while I try taking some of the as-needed nausea meds that the hospital gave me. Five minutes later I discover just how well they work. Bleeaaaurrrffff... Apparently I took too long to take them. Since I just threw up the first pills I figure they don't count so I take another dose. Around this time I'm starting to admit that maybe... JUST MAYBE... I have a problem. My parents help me pack up my backpack with the usual stuff and my mom and I head to the hospital.Once we get there we go through the usual process of sitting in a room the size of a shoebox and answering redundant questions. Up until this point the pain has been rather tolerable; but for some reason whatever I had chose the moment we got there to kick into high gear. I spend the entire time they are talking staring at the wall and wondering why they can't hurry the hell up and get me some pain meds. They finally move us back to an ER room which essentially contains a stretcher/bed and a chair, neither of which are particularly useful in my current plight. I begin pacing back and forth across the room waiting for them to come in to do something. Let me make this perfectly clear... it took... Way... Too... Long!!! By the time they get around to me I am at a four on their pain scale even while standing (sitting hit the eight mark a while ago) and they say they will get me some pain medication as quickly as possible. Apparently they have don't view that phrase the same way I do. I begin my pacing again as eight thousand doctors, nurses, and whoever else was around asked me the same stupid questions over and over and for some reason listen to my breathing (I can only assume that it is some kind of nervous habit because my problem was clearly not my lungs). They hook me up to IV fluids because apparently whatever was wrong with me had me dehydrated. I had now been there for several hours and was still waiting for some kind of pain relief. At this point I was nearing a ten on the pain scale while standing and was spending much of my time pounding my fist on the counter and swearing under my breath. I finally just sat down because my legs were exhausted and I could no longer really tell the difference between the pain levels anyway. Finally after two and a half hours someone came in with a syringe of morphine. Immediately after the injection the pain level started to drop. It dropped to about a five on the pain scale (which at this point felt quite mild) but stopped. I informed them of this and requested another dose. While they went to go get it and I decided to try laying down. About five minutes into the wait for I noticed the my pain level going back up. Several minutes later I was right back at a ten on the pain scale and was trying very, VERY, hard to convince myself I was just trapped in some kind of bizarre nightmare. After suffering through this for another hour they came in with a second slightly larger dose of morphine but at this point I wasn't particularly hopeful. It lasted less time than the first dose. At this point while they were all off trying to figure out what to do next I had progressed to banging my fist against the walls and swearing violently in what may or may not have been english. After another half an hour they came in and said that they had a different pain killer to try called dilaudid. By this time (four hours after I got there I remind you) I barely bothered to get my hopes up. Just like the morphine it only brought the pain down to about the halfway point... but this time the effect stuck! Ahhhhh... relief at last (a five on the pain scale may not be relaxing but after several hours at a ten it makes for a good start). They decide that while the drugs are working they should get me in for a CT scan quickly. Again they are apparently using a different dictionary than me because I lay there staring at the ceiling for two whole hours before they finally came to wheel me down to the scan. After about a half an hour we get back to the ER room, I get another shot of dilaudid (whew!) and they say that they will be moving me up to the Intensive Care Unit in half an hour. A hour and a half later they finally move me to the ICU.After I get to the ICU about eight doctors and nurses all crowd around my bed all doing different things at once. I honestly couldn't tell you what they were doing even if I wanted to because the gave me some pain killer called Fentanyl that brought the pain down to a very tolerable two on the pain scale and I proceeded to fade in and out of consciousness for the next several hours while they did their stuff. When I finally came awake (relatively speaking) the doctors and nurses were gone and I was hooked up to more monitors and bags of medicine and fluids than I could possibly count (though technically speaking I probably couldn't count higher than about four in my drug/pain/fatigue fogged state). I was told several theories for what caused my illness but the one that seems to have been settled on was Septic Shock. Basically this means that I got an infection of the blood causing all of my blood to flow to my vital organs leaving no oxygen in my muscles and thus causing the intense pain. I pretty much lay there doing absolutely nothing for the entire day and most of the next morning as well. Around the middle of the day I finally got enough energy up to try using my laptop some (I had tried once before but had barely been able to open the lid and had immense trouble differentiating between the keys). I ate some breakfast consisting of whatever was soft (soggy cheerios and applesauce) because my gums were the one part of me that still hurt alot. After asking about this they gave me something called Magic Mouthwash (seriously). It contains lidocain and causes any part of your mouth that you swish it in to go completely numb but unfortunately it also wears off very quickly. I continued to play around on the computer for several hours while doctors came in and out and talked about moving me to the oncology ward. Incidentally it was actually during this period that I started creating this blog. After a few more hours of playing around on the internet and complaining about the oxygen tube they were making me wear they finally decided that I was moving to the oncology ward.I got to the oncology ward, took a nap, woke up, set up my laptop and such and proceeded to do what I normally do when I am in-patient. Nothing. Actually, aside from the occasional CT scan I have done absolutely nothing this entire stay. I just got back from my two scans that I had to do today. The first was the PET scan which was interesting because they gave me Ativan so I was pretty much stoned and ended up sleeping through the scan. The second was the CT which was about as boring as it always is. I am now sitting in my room just kinda hanging out and doing nothing. The question of when I will be able to go home again is still dependant on how quickly they can fully eliminate the infection from my system. The beginning off the next chemotherapy cycle has been pushed back a week to the 31st so hopefully I will get some medicine-free time at home before I have to come back.Well... That should pretty much fill in the story up to the moment. I will be posting updates here as any interesting developments occur. Other sources of information may include my twitter feed for random musings and the Carepages Website which is primarily maintained by my parents (though I still check in every once and a while). Feel free to leave comments!Ian Blais