Cycle 2 so far…

Hello All,

Well, Shaun made it through his second ‘full week on’ and for the most part, is still feeling pretty good.

As we were told when all of this started, the effects of chemotherapy are cumulative so the symptoms get progressively harder as treatments go on. But hearing this and actually understanding it are two different things. Looking back, it seems naive of me to have been so nervous about his first day of chemo. As Louise and I sat with him at PMH, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I was on pins and needles expecting some instantaneous reaction. But now I understand how chemo works over time and I can see differences in the way Shaun feels after this full week vs. the first one. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still doing really well and feeling pretty good, but this round definitely took a little more out of him.

Ironically, the night of my last post (Thursday) Shaun woke up in the wee hours feeling a bit nauseous and couldn’t get back to sleep. But as mentioned, there’s no shortage of anti-nausea meds with chemo so he took one of the stronger ones and was able to sleep eventually. Throughout Friday and Saturday he kept saying he felt a bit… off. He logged some serious nap hours and we just laid low with soup and movies. By Sunday he was feeling much better – walking down to Queen Street for brunch, visiting with his parents and mine, and even (my personal favourite) cleaning the bathroom!

As for measurable progress, we still don’t have his second tumour marker test back (AFP) but we’re hoping to get it this week and I’ll share it as soon as we do. Meanwhile, because cancer can only grow in an acidic environment, trying to alkalize your body chemistry is an important aspect of fighting and avoiding cancer. For those of you who’ve forgotten grade 11 chemistry (um, me), a neutral pH is 7: anything lower is acidic and anything higher is alkaline. When this all started, the naturopath discovered Shaun’s pH was 5, which may not sound that far off from 7 but each number on the pH scale represents a tenfold change in acidity or alkalinity. In other words, he was 100 times more acidic than neutral. Now his pH is 6, so it’s getting closer to where we want it to be! If you’re interested in your own chemistry, you can pick up pH paper from any naturopath or health food store. You just pee on it, then match the resulting colour of the paper to the scale to find out where you stand. I’ll fill you in on how Shaun’s becoming more alkaline sometime when it isn’t already 1:00am. 😉

For now, those of you following along know that next steps are the next two Tuesdays, when Shaun will receive his final cycle 2 drips. These should still be short days – Tuesday’s drips are Bleomycin-only (not the drug he reacted to), so they won’t need to be accompanied by Benadryl and cortisone.

As always, thanks for your care and concern and please continue to check in.

All the best,

xo J & S