08/26/2025
This a long recap of the past couple of weeks:
Life is so strange sometimes.
Last year at this time, I was starting to get on the road to recovery from my cancer. I was diagnosed in February of 2024 with Stage IV prostate cancer, and got radiation and come chemo - at that point, pills and directed radiation. By August, the radiation was done and I was just taking pills and geting infusions for hormone therapy.
The road got a little more bumpy this year, with the cancer becoming resistant to the pills. Turns out the cancer had produced enough variants of itself to find a version that was able to bypass the drugs. I went from cancer indicator of 3000 (otherwise known as you should be dead) to 20, with a goal of reaching below 3. By spring of this year, though, the number was rising slowly but steadily. A change in drug to a stronger one turned out to have little to no effect, so I was moved to an infusion, of which I completed my first one just over a couple of weeks ago.
To make it easier to administer the infusion, I got a port inserted - it’s an implanted catheter that makes it easier to infuse. The normal method of infusion is by IV, which is good for relatively quick things (I get an infusion for a drug to help keep my bone mass using an IV). For a 2-hour infusion that has to be done on a three week cycle, though, an IV that constantly has to be redone is not a solution. A port makes it easier by providing an easy target to put a neeedle in - it’s a raised implant, and it directly goes to a vein.
The infusion experience is relatively painless - the area is numbed with an ice pack, and the needle is then inserted. It’s not even a bug bite. And then after the saline is pumped thorug and med is prepped, it’s added slowly for the next two hours. During hat time you can read or do sitting stuff. I did some reading and thought about sketching.
Afterward, the needle is removed, some cleanup is done, and I wa out and taken home by my sister. Since I took some drugs beforehand, I cannot drive. I also was prescribed some drugs for pain and antinausea.
Fortunately, I didn’t nausea. But I did quite a few other side effects. The chemo this time wasn’t an elegant specific cell killer, but more of a carpet bomb. I felt it too once all the pretreatmet drugs wore off. All the areas that I had discomfort (my left leg and back) got elevated to pain. And there were a few other places that had pin, but nothing on the level of the leg.
It took me about a week to work through the pain, and while the pain was elevated, it wasn’t enough to do things. It was enough to stop me from wanting to do things, though. The steroid I was given for relief during this time also affected my emotional state. There was a lot of bodily and spiritual fatigue I had.
My sense of taste also changed. Most of the foods I loved to eat lost their taste to make way for a general bitter taste. Salt was enhanced. And my appetite dropped. My blood sugar checks became inaccurate because of the steriod - and they were now reading low. My digestive system went wonky, including elimination…the less said the better.
The worst thing for me was the lack of motivation. I had a wall of apathy to climb or bypass to actually do anything, and that wall was formidable. If I wanted to do something, there was almost always an excuse put in place to not do it. Sometimes it was annoying, other times, it was frustrating. Drawing was put on pause because I didn’t know what to draw (when I could just doodle) and I also didn’t know when I would run out of energy. Quick sketches became the thing I did. My desk gathered clutter because I couldn’t focus long enough to clean.
Thing came to a head when I got upset at the dogs for waking me up one morning. They usually do this, and in a morning, they ususally wake me every hour on the hour to go out for one reason or another. Elvis (the big guy), will tap me with his paw until I get up. Rosie (one of the two lil pups) will bark loudly until I get up. Bubba will sneeze/bark to get my attention. They all want out at the same time, so it isn’t a big deal most of the time. But this day, Elvis got me up up at 6 am, then they all wanted out at 7 am, then 8 am, then 9 am. I got a bit upset at that point because I wasn’t getting any rest. My sister noticed and closed my room off from the pups for the rest of the morning, and I got some sleep. I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the steroid that got me, but it was unusual for me to get that rankled.
After a week, things started wearing off. The pain was going down, and my appetite was beginning to return. I still spent a lot time resting. 10 days later, I was able to got out and about. And by the two week mark, I was pretty much back to a sorta normal.
Then my hair fell out.
As Roseanne Roseannadanna said, “It’s always something.”
So it takes me two weeks to work through a treatment. I get treatments every three weeks. I don’t know for how long, I will be doing these, as these were done so I could get more radiation treatment. At least now I know what to expect, and I feel better about that. That’s good, becase I get another treatment this week.
It’s always something.
