The Cancer Journey : Calling all you Prayer Warriors

Reposted from denisetam.webs.com March 26, 2010 I'm at the half way mark in my chemotherapy treatment and though it's been a bumpy and scary ride, it also has gone by fairly quickly and with less pain than I thought. This past Tuesday I went in for a PET/CT scan where they shot some funky blue radiation in me (the needle had to be incased in some metal sheath) and asked me to drink a mysterious white liquid during my 2 hour wait (everything was said so quickly and in Chinese I didn't remember the name). After the wait I was asked to eat an opaque white jelly which came in a container marked with a label that read "esophagus cream"! After double checking with the nurses and reading the "made in Canada" label I finally plugged my nose and gulped down what i could. The scan itself took no more than 30 minutes. On Monday I will be going in for the ever painful and dreaded bone marrow biopsy! Here's a short clip from you tube to show you what part of the procedure is like.

The procedure lasts maybe 15-20 minutes all together. First they numb you (which i think is a hoax because I felt everything! Either that or the procedure to begin with is excruciating!) and then they put this really long needle into your lower back and pull, suck, pump away until they get enough marrow out. Last time my doc was supposed to do both right and left sides but I think I scared him with my screaming and crying that he decided to do just one. I would've clobbered him first before he could even reach over to numb my other side! These tests are necessary to see how well my body is responding to the chemo and to see if the cancer is still in my bones. If it's not responding to my doctor's expectations then he will change my chemo drugs to harsher ones (R-CHOP). But if all is well, then I will either continue according to plan OR my family and I are thinking of stopping all together and opt for gentler and more natural therapies. On a more cheerful note, we will find out the results from the scan on Monday and the bone marrow results will come later. We're praying for remission or at least a big improvement from my last scan where they found swollen nodes all throughout my body. So I'm calling on some prayer warriors to pray for: ~ peace on Monday ~ minimal pain during the biopsy ~ good results: let's shoot for the moon and pray for remission (though we won't really know until the marrow biopsy comes back) ~ through the pain I will remember that God is good! ~ quick recovery from the biopsy ~ guidance and wisdom from above for the next step Thank you and much love! Denise