What a crazy ride this has been...

It absolutely blows my mind, that this chapter of my life is now behind me.
I have officially completed 6 weeks of radiation therapy.

Now we wait until May, when I will travel back to Vancouver again for some more Imaging and various tests, and then in June we get the answer to the ultimate question; "Did we beat it?"


This last week was definitely the hardest of them all. The radiation finally started to really take it's physical toll on my body which means a lot more pain, a lot less eating, and a lot more drugs.

Mornings have been the worst. I wake up, and my throat and mouth are so dry they tear each other apart, and I get to spend the first 10 minutes of every morning swollen, in pain, coughing up blood.
Then the drugs start to kick in, and things start to pick up a little. treatments have been making me very nauseous, and yesterday was the first time i finally got the relief of ACTUALLY puking. I know that shouldn't be a relief, but when you've spent a part of nearly every day, for six weeks, in the fetal position and nauseous, puking is definitely a relief. Even if it DOES feel like acid coming up.

My face, neck, chest, and scars look ridiculous right now. Some of it worse than other parts, but for the most part i'm turning purple/black. It FEELS like a really, really, bad sun burn or infection. I'm coughing up parts of my mouth and throat at least 30 times an hr, which eventually leads to more bloody hacking. Keeping down solid food of any sort is VERY hard now, and even Ensure is starting to get hard to take down, because it is so thick, it increases the amount of hacking up I'm doing.

I just realized how much that all sounds like complaining or whining. I hope I don't come across that way, as I try to remind myself daily that it could always be much, MUCH worse. I know that somewhere out there right now, someone is fighting twice as hard for their life as I am mine. I don't mean to in any way downplay my own plight, but I also don't want to label myself a victim.

So. The waiting game begins. A couple weeks of healing, and we will be getting closer and closer to test results. It feels like its going to be a hundred years of waiting, but I thought the same thing 6 weeks ago about getting through treatment, and here I am today.

I will keep this page updated from time to time as updates become available, and more will come in the next few months in terms of how I'd like to use this site as a "go-to" guide for people in similar situations. and once I know what day my test results will be in, I will let you all know.

Thank you again to all who are keeping up to date, and to all who have written, called, and even traveled fair distances just to see me through this. Your interest, compassion, and love has helped me through this fight more than words can express.

Talk soon.
Marcus

AAaaaand I'm back...

So, It has definitely been a while.

To all of you, thank you for your patience... There has been so much going on, and the treatments are definitely starting to take their negative toll on my body, which is leaving me with less and less energy, and less and less desire to do anything other than lay around and hurt.

Tomorrow will leave me with only 12 more doses of radiation to do. I can't believe how fast these first 3 weeks have gone.

When I first walked into this, wide eyed like a deer in headlights, unsure, and terrified, I expected that the next 6 weeks were going to be the longest in my life.


I am happy to say that the journey thus far has not been as horrible as I expected.
The pain is ... well, it hurts. I think it would be a little more tolerable if it were one kind of pain, but there are so many different things that hurt. They've got me on astronomical amounts of pain medication, which in the beginning were low doses that only kind of helped. Now, with the amounts I'm on, I am finally starting to get some REAL pain relief. I am definitely a little doped-up 24/7 , but I guess that's the way it has to be for now.

I'm a little worried that as the radiation does it's damage over the next two weeks, the pain is going to get worse. But I just keep telling myself "Two weeks left, Two weeks left."  I've come this far, I can push on through.

I'm sorry this isn't the most informative of posts, but the meds are kickin in, and its getting really hard to think.
But i wanted to make sure i got SOMETHING up, so you didn't think I'd forgotten about my readers. I PROMISE there will be more to come SOON.

Take care,
Marcus.