Chronicles of a Cancer Patient

I Have Cancer

Hello everyone -

It’s hard to come up with a good way to say this in an e-mail, especially a mass e-mail, but I thought that perhaps this was the best way to let everyone know. Some of you may know that I’ve been particularly ill as of late, and that the doctors have had a difficult time finding exactly what the disease is. For those of you who haven’t heard any of this yet, consider yourselves lucky that you didn’t have to go through the months of playing the “Disease of the Week” game, where each week I would be whole-heartedly convinced that I had some exotic ailment like Malaria of the p.vivax strain, or the very unlikely Thalysemia, or the almost unknown Whipple’s Disease.

It was just a week ago that the doctors were aggressively testing for one of these strange, mystic diseases – when suddenly the tests all came back wrong and in just a couple phone calls, everything seemed to fall apart. At least, that’s how it felt to me.

A few more tests in a different direction confirmed the findings. I have cancer.

I have a cancer called lymphoma. This is a cancer of the lymph nodes and, I’m glad to say, a very curable kind of cancer. I’m told that with the proper treatment, 97.9% of lymphoma patients survive. Nevertheless, it is cancer and I’ll have to go through all of the cancer rituals to get rid of it. Chemotherapy will begin soon, followed by whatever else it takes to get rid of this.

This is difficult. But I can handle this, I will beat this, and I will come out a better man in the end. I am looking forward to being a cancer survivor.

If I can’t have my health, I’m glad that I still have my family and friends. It is a relief to know that I will have you all with me as I go through this. I understand that it is hard to know what to say in a situation like this, but please don’t be shy. This is a fine opportunity to make jokes about me losing my hair, etc., etc.

I look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Future Cancer Survivor,
Dave Hahn

P.S. – I’m afraid I don’t have the e-mail addresses of everyone that I’d like to send this to. Please feel free to pass this on.

Chemotherapy Treatment #1

Chemo Rookie

Hi friends,

A few of you wanted me to let you know how things went today, on my first day of chemo. I appreciate your support more than I can explain. I thought I’d let you know how things are going.

It was long. 6 hours. But most of that was just sitting and waiting. There are a lot of paperwork and procedures on the first day, and it certainly wasn’t the hospitals fault. I expected it to be long, and I brought some entertainment. And anyway, it’s certainly not like I had anything better to do.

The Cancer Center at Sherman Hospital was really great. Because it was my first time, they put me in a private room with one of those snazzy hospital beds and spent a lot of time explaining things to me. I received 9 kinds of drugs today, and the oncology nurse sat with me and my parents for the whole process, which I felt was really extraordinary, even if it might be standard.

The only thing I had trouble with was the one drug that was probably the least of my worries. They gave me some regular ol’ Benedryl to compensate for any allergic reactions I might have had to the chemo and the stuff couldn’t have been more annoying. Maybe it was an extra high dose or the fact that it was an IV drip. My head couldn’t stay awake, but my legs couldn’t stop moving. Picture Sleeping Beauty as a sprinter, or a cross between the Tryptophan-like tactics of poor John Kerry’s speech writers and the body of a dancing Napoleon Dynamite.

I came home drowsy and slept it off. A friend brought us a fantastic dinner, and since then I’ve felt – to my sincere surprise – really well. The nurse said that this would happen, that the steroids would make me feel spunky for awhile, but that I would drop after a day or two (so I figure I better get this e-mail out while I still got some spunk! Note: for evidence of “spunk,” see John Kerry joke, paragraph 4, line 4.).

The best news of the day is that the bone marrow test came back today and it showed that my bone marrow is completely clear of cancer. Had the cancer spread to my bone marrow, my chances of survival would have considerably dropped, so I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that these bones of mine are clean.

To be honest, I was really anxious about today. There’s a lot of discordant information about chemo therapy – how it’s terrible, or how it’s not-so-bad, etc., etc. – and especially about the first day. I believe this dissonance is due to the fact that chemo therapy is a distinctly individual experience, and that each person is effected mentally and physically in decidedly different ways, even by the same drugs. As it turns out, today was a relieving, giant step toward getting rid of this dumb thing.

That being said, I understand the more difficult parts of chemo therapy are still to come, so I’m not counting my chickens quite yet. Nevertheless, I’m indescribably consoled by having experienced the chemo process firsthand and to have seen the immediate reaction my body takes to the drugs. I also feel very confident that I’m in good hands at the Cancer Center at Sherman, and that comfort, you can imagine, feels priceless.

Thank you again to all of you for helping me through this. Being the social person that I am, I’ve found that it has been the concern, affection and humor of my friends and family that has given me the most strength during the past weeks.

Future Cancer Survivor,
Dave Hahn

Cancer Quote ~ Frank A. Clark

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. ~Frank A. Clark

What Kind of Cancer Is This?

I have Hodgkins Lymphoma, what is also called Hodgkins Disease. This is cancer of the lymph nodes. This is one of the most curable kinds of cancers, as it responds remarkably well to chemo therapy. There are other kinds of lymphoma, all classed as “non-Hodgkins” lymphomas, and, as I understand it, the cure rate for these kinds of cancer is not as good.

There is a great deal of information available on the web about Hodgkins Disease. For an overview, I would recommend the Mayo Clinic’s website: Hodgkins Disease.

One website I’ve found interesting has been Bill Bujake’s Hodgkins Journal, which talks at length about his experience fighting and curing the disease.

How Long Is Chemotherapy? How Often Do You Go?

I will be going to chemo every two weeks for six months.

The particular kind of chemotherapy I am given is called ABVD.

There will be a passing exam at the end of this blog. Study hard.

Quote ~ African Proverb

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. ~ African Proverb

Bone Pain From Neulasta

The booster shots they give me during chemo encourage my bone marrow to overproduce red and white blood cells. This will ensure that I’m strong enough to continue the treatments.

It’s hard to appreciate how many bones you have in your body until they all start hurting at once. It’s over now, but yesterday my bones screamed out like a wicked choir in a clench-your-teeth-and-wait-for-it-to-pass kind of pain.

I’ve heard it said that if ever you wanted to forget your troubles, you should just wear shoes that are too small. I can say that by yesterday evening my mind was completely clear, save for the total focus on my over-producing skeleton.

I’m fine now. And I probably have more big, healthy red and white blood cells now than I’ll ever know what to do with. If we had a red blood cell contest today, I would beat all of you, so don’t even try it.

Baseline EKG Test

No Need To Be Alarmed

I was laid out on the table, stuck between the plastic mattress and the billion-dollar piece of high-tech medical equipment aimed at my heart when the fire alarm went off. Lights and sirens wailed through the hallways and all the doors slammed shut with a precision that can only be accomplished in a medical facility.

“No need to be alarmed,” the nurse said.

Sure lady, how about I pump you full of steroids, stick you in this machine, hook you up to the EKG, throw on all the sirens – and then see what your heart rate is.

Although the official results of the heart scan will not be back for a few days, I was able to glean some information on my own from the pictures. I have a heart and it is pumping. So, for all you girls out there that told me over and over that it wasn’t true – I now have medical proof that, yes, I do have a heart, and it is not made of stone.

Furthermore, I’m happy to say that my pulse is 72. 72! Prior to diagnosis, I was anxious that my heart rate was well above normal – often reaching past 100 while at rest. As it turns out, Tito the Tumor was trying to push my heart out of the way and making it difficult for the poor thing to pump blood. A lowered pulse could only mean that Tito has already begun to significantly shrink.

Tito was also competing for the best real estate with my lungs, which caused the cough I had for a year and a half or so. But now the cough is gone, and I no longer have to go coughing and hacking through life. What a relief.

Quote ~ Jewish Proverb

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. ~ Jewish Proverb

What Is Chemotherapy?

Before all this I didn’t really know what the difference between chemo and radiation was, it all just seemed like some nondescript, horrible stuff that I hoped I never had to go through.

But the world keeps spinning, and it turns out chemo and radiation are two different things. I’m still not entirely clear on what radiation is, and I’m not sure I’ll even have to go through it, so I’m happy to just discuss chemo.

Chemotherapy is a treatment for cancer that involves an IV, a lazy boy recliner, and chocolate chip cookies. The lazy boys at the place I go are all green and covered in fake leather. They are lined up against a wall with dividers between them, giving the same sort of fragile privacy that similar dividers provide in men’s bathrooms.

Each lazy boy has a phone next to it. This is in case you are super busy and need to make important phone calls whilst they are pumping you full of the drugs that will damn-near kill you. I don’t know anyone this busy.

Each chair is also equipped with it’s own television that gets poor reception of local stations. This is convenient if you are really nuts about daytime television and you wouldn’t miss your soaps for anything.

The cookies are in the waiting room. I don’t know where they get them, but they are awesome. Clearly the bakery keeps the best cookies for us cancer patients. They probably use a pound of butter in each cookie, but I mean, what do we care, right? What, is it going to give us cancer? Gimme one of those damn cookies, and put more butter in it next time.

The rest of the cancer center is pretty sterile looking. The walls are painted with the soothing, tan color that they always use on those HGTV shows. Hanging in the corner is an embroidered acronym that cleverly uses the individual letters of CHEMOTHERAPY in a sad prayer. There are also small dolls dressed as nurses. This corner freaks me out.

The real nurses sit at a big desk and talk on the phone to doctors. Behind them is a big ice and water machine. The water and ice machine is the biggest piece of equipment in the whole place.

When you come for your chemotherapy session, they first take your blood and send it off to “the lab,” which must be a place very, very far away, judging on the amount of time it takes for things to go and come back from it. You then have to wait a few hours for the far-away people at “the lab” to test your blood.

An order is then sent to “the pharmacy,” another place in a far-off land, where they measure out and mix the drugs that they will be giving you. The drugs have to be measured exactly, based on your height and weight that day.

Meanwhile, you are still sitting in the lazy boy, watching your soaps and eating your butter cookies. The nurses hook up an IV to the port that was surgically implanted in your chest and give you huge amounts of “saline.” “Saline” is something that looks like water that is apparently not water that makes you have to go to the bathroom a lot.

Before the drugs come, the nurse, who in my case, is sort of cute, puts several drugs through your IV. First, she puts in a steroid called Decadron. This is to bolster your system before the other drugs destroy your system. Having Decodron is a lot like having a direct IV drip of pure, liquid caffeine.

Then the nurse puts Benedryl through the IV, which makes you extraordinarily tired. You might fall asleep at this point, but as you are unable to stop moving from the Decadron, sleep is not really an option.

Then the chemo drugs come. Their are four different drugs that need to go into you before you can leave. The first one is colored like red Kool-Aid. It’s a little frightening to see the red liquid floating down the IV tube towards your body. You think, “OH GOD, here it comes!” And the nurse is looking at you, and you are looking at the nurse, and suddenly it seems like all the other patients are looking at you, and you are looking at them, and the red stuff is coming down the pipe, and the nurse is looking at you, and you can’t stop fidgeting, and the room is getting smaller, and it’s coming and it’s coming and it’s coming!!!!

But then it’s not so bad. It doesn’t feel like anything. One by one they put all the drugs into you and it doesn’t feel like anything. You might as well just watch your soap operas, because it’s not exciting. I bring my laptop or my iPod and watch movies and listen to music.

Then they give you a few shots that will, again, help fix the system that the drugs just screwed up. By this point you are pretty sick of being stuck with needles and you have had your fill of butter cookies. They take out the IV and they tell you to go home, that’s it.

Chronicles of a
Cancer Patient