Better prepare for a whole lotta drugs

I met with my oncologist, Dr. Lesesne, last Tuesday, and I brought a whole slew of thoughts and references for him. He ok'd my whole drug schedule, so (as long as insurance covers everything) I'll be taking four--yes I said four--different drugs. 

I'm starting off with good ol' Temodar, but I'm tweeking it a little. Being that I've already taken it once, and the tumor returned. It would be silly, if not down right stupid to use it again in the same manner, but expect different results. So I'm going to do a very low dose schedule, but I'm doing it every day. So I won't be doing it for 5 days in higher doses then resting for 23 days. I'll be doing it in much lower doses, but I'll be doing it everyday with no breaks. Hopefully, this will keep my cancerous cells which are already used to this drug under a more consistent pressure to wither away and die.

I'm also going to be coupling this with Celebrex which, as many of you may know, is used for arthritis and generally for chronic inflammation. It's essentially an anti-inflammatory agent that worked better than the standard of care in a German clinical trial a few years ago.

Then I'm also mixing in a little bit of Accutane which, many of you may also know, is for acne. Now being that I'm not a pubescent 8th grader, it actually has other effects as well. It targets the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor. By blocking this, it can help slow tumor growth, which, in case you're wondering, is something that I'm hoping for.

Now the cherry on top is going to be chloroquine the ages-old, quinine-derived malaria remedy that I used before. This essentially helps keep the genes of the cells stable so that they can't mutate around the Temodar. It'll keep it killing them as long as possible.      

So essentially if you are what you eat, then I'm going to look less like a man and more like a test tube in the very near future.


I'm also going to meet with Dr. Friedman who, as many of you don't know, is quite the neuro-oncologist, but is also quite the ego, or so I hear. So I'm heading in there with all my defenses as high as possible, so that if that SOB makes me feel worthless, I'm gonna roll in there and have no hesitation at rolling right back out. You can only put up with so much you know. I have a great team so far, so I don't need anyone else's ____.   

Road Trip of Disaster 2012

Well I've made it. I don't know how, but I got back home. I wish I would've caught more of the experiences of my road trip on video, but there was too much poop-and-cat-vomit-handling for it to be convenient. Just see for yourself:

Yeah. So here I am back in Atlanta with lots of stuff to do over the next two weeks. Let's see. I have to get back up to Philly for a mixing session, then I have to get back down to Baltimore to visit the hydrocephalus clinic, so that I can find out the origin of my dizziness (which I already may know about, but I'll have to talk about it later since it's so disconcerting). Then my brother's coming up to Philly to help me move out, and then we're off back down to Atlanta Saturday mid-day. Yikes.

So this was the road trip of disaster, but I think that the next week will be the week of disaster until I can get my bearings again.

Okay next time I'll talk about what my plans are and why I think (I may know this actually) I'm dizzy.