MORE TESTS!! NEW DIAGNOSIS!! PREGNANCY!!

  MORE TESTS  
It has been a week and a half since my last post (not including my daily video check-ins) so here we go with another update:

First off, I got the heart test results from November 4th and... well... I have a good strong heart!

I also got the CT scan results and they showed my tumour has shrunk quite a bit which is great news. Remember that I don't need to be in complete remission before my stem cell transplant, I just need to demonstrate chemo-sensitivity, i.e., that the chemo actually does its job.

I am still waiting to see the results of my pulmonary function test, but I'm not worried about that one. The doctor who performed the test made several comments about me having good lungs.

On November 6th I had a dental consult. This is to identify potential sources of infection like gum disease, tooth decay, tooth abscesses, etc. because any of those things could lead to a bacterial infection which could spread to my blood while I'm immunocompromised. They should have just phoned my regular dentist and saved me a trip into town though. Even I could have told them my mouth and teeth are perrrrrrfect! ;)

Remember that all this was happening in the days following my Monday November 3rd chemo session, so in terms of how I was feeling - well - I was slowly on the mend. By the weekend I was well enough to go for a hike with my brother Jeff and my buddy Brad.



This past week was quite busy with more tests and appointments:

On Monday I went over to Vancouver for another appointment with the stem cell doctor. Nothing to report from that. It was an 11 hour travel day, for a 15 minute appointment.

On Tuesday I had to do a 24 hour urine collection which is exactly what it sounds like: I had to pee into a container every time I went potty and then bring it into the hospital lab on Wednesday.

On Wednesday I spent my morning in the hospital getting bloodwork done, as well as having an ECG of my heart, and a chest X-RAY.

On Thursday I went to Vancouver (again) and had a Lumbar Puncture. This was a relatively simple procedure where the doctor (using local freezing and a needle) withdrew some spinal fluid and replaced it with a small amount of chemotherapy. The purpose of this was to make sure my cancer hasn't spread to my central nervous system. Luckily, I found out, it hasn't.

On Friday I met with the apheresis doctor in Vancouver. She is the one who is in charge of my stem cell collection procedure next week. She went over the whole thing, answered questions, and checked my veins to make sure they were adequate for the procedure. She also discovered some blood clots along one of my superficial arm veins, which is not the best of news. I have to try to get rid of them using a warm compress and some local inflammatory drugs, and hope that they don't begin to appear in other deeper veins.

As I mentioned in my last post, the purpose of all these tests is to make sure my body can handle the stem cell transplant. So far, so good!


  NEW DIAGNOSIS  
My oncologist phoned me last week to give me some interesting news. You may remember that two years ago I was diagnosed with PMBCL which is a type of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. We assumed this was a relapse, but my biopsy from September has shown otherwise. I now have Hodgkin's Lymphoma, or more specifically, Nodular Sclerosing Hodgkin Lymphoma. There seems to be some uncertainty now about how this is related to my last cancer, but my oncologist said that the pathologist sent everything to someone else in Vancouver for a second opinion. According to my mom's research, PMBCL and HL are closely related and people who get one will sometimes have a "relapse" where the other one appears. This change in diagnosis will not affect my current treatment plan, and my outlook is apparently still the same. It is still interesting though!



  PREGNANCY  
We found out in September that the high dose chemo and stem cell transplant would likely leave me infertile. This was a pretty big blow because we were planning on starting a family sometime next year.

With only a couple weeks to go before I started chemo, we went to a fertility clinic where I gave some samples to freeze for later use. Then we had a discussion about how expensive it was, and how much it's going to cost to use those samples in the future. We decided that perhaps we should try to squeak one in naturally before I started chemo.

We literally had one weekend for this to work.

And what do ya know... it worked! Kaitlin is pregnant, and due on May 22nd, which is my 30th birthday! This is such exciting news for us in the middle of an extremely trying time in our lives, and it gives us something incredible to look forward to in the Spring. Not only that, but we still have my samples in storage at the fertility clinic for if and when we ever want a second child.

At times it has been somewhat tricky to navigate the waters of pregnancy hormones and tiredness vs. cancer stress and chemo side effects, but overall it was a pretty smooth first trimester. Hopefully it continues that way!

That's all the updates for now. I am heading to Vancouver next Wednesday and will be there until after Christmas, so the next few days will probably be quite busy preparing for that. I will likely do another post next weekend, after my stem cell collection on Thursday.

Thanks for reading,
Christopher