FOLFOX Fun Hour (AKA Kurt's treatment liveblog)

I've been told that our fans have requested a liveblog of today's treatment, so here goes.

6:45AM - Northbound and down, loaded up and truckin'... We have a new tradition of listening to the 90's on 9 Sirius station on our way up to treatment, and this morning didn't disappoint. Jen and I discovered that we both remember the words to Coolio's timeless classic, 1,2,3,4. So in that vein, whaddup everybody so glad 'ya here!

7:20AM - drop the dogs off at day care and head for starbucks.

7:35AM - leaving sbux and heading for JHU. How could 16mg of dex and a couple shots of espresso go wrong?

8:15AM - apparently 16mg of dex and 2 shots of espresso makes my heart rate climb over 130 resting. hmmm, i'm feeling great! No pain, lots of energy, i'm typing about 600 WPM so it's all good, right? the nurse hooked me up to a pulse ox monitor that beeps with every heartbeat, and it sounded like a machine gun. It got the attention of a few nurses, but I expliained to them that it was 85 yesterday when I wasn't on speed, so chillax honeys!!

8:30AM - sitting on my daybed writing this and waiting for erbitux. kinda like waiting for godot, except it's not. i have a feeling that today's gonna be a wild ride between the benadryl, dex, and sbux...

9:00AM - The nurse staff meeting just got out and Margaret's here now. About ready to get plugged into my pre-meds before the erbitux. My high has a few minutes left - gotta get my emails out before I get stoned!!!

9:38am - holy shit. 50mg iv benadryl straight pushed into iv. now hunt ane peck typing. talking to margaret actually fell asleep during sentence. erbitux going down. done at 11:40. wow that hits hard. bam onut. need to hit publish button. so far away. head and hands and fet fery heavy. dont care that can't spell. publish now. bye,.

10:59am - had to pee. awake now. it's some weird feelings with the uppers fighting with the downers in my system. carole here - more later.

11:42am - back now. cetuximab is all done and we're going through the rest of the premeds - aduvan for nausea, more dex (woo hoo!!), then magnesium and calcium. we'll get the oxaliplatin started around noon, which means we'll be here till about 6:30 tonight... boo... Carole and I worked out our schedule for the rest of the spring. It's gonna be nice - I'm going to get a couple free weeks since I'm scheduling around a 3-day regatta at the end of April and a wedding out in Colorado in May.

We had a very good visit with Dr. Donehower this morning before I got knocked out. He reminded us both why we like him so much - we both are just so confident in him. He looked at the extent of my rash (which is now officially head to toe, front and back) and said "Wow!". He hasn't seen a rash with my extent, and he reiterated the point that there's a direct corellation between rash extent and cetuximab efficacy. That's excellent news for us!! He looked over our last scan results with us, and gave us some much needed perspective. He reminded us that the lymph nodes showed good shrinkage. He also reminded us that in a lot of cases, the primary tumors and lymph nodes can sometimes respond to the chemo faster than mets (metastases) in the liver. He also said said that the scans, like all the tests, have natural variance in measurements taken, and that he wasn't at all concerned that we had plateaued yet. It was just really great to talk with him and get some of his confidence!

Sorry this took so long - I'm making friends here in the chemo wing. Oxali's flowin, I'm feeling good, so it's just time to roll on along.

1:30pm - still hangin out. I made the mistake of getting a peppermint mocha at starbucks this morning and my stomach is now paying the price for it. I had Margaret give me a little extra anti-nausea for safety's sake, so I'm better now by a bit, but still not great. Other than that I'm still just hangin out. At least I have some good bball to watch this afternoon!

3:00pm - Sooo, Peter. What's happening..... I'm now going through some online training classes that are seriously dry. I'm staying awake, somehow, but it's a struggle...

4:00pm - another hour down. I think we've got one more hour for the oxaliplatin then about a half hour for cleanup. No more work - we're playing cards now.

5:00pm - oxaliplatin done and i'm working through another quick round of mag & calcium, then the 5FU, which by the way is the best name ever for a chemo drug. 5 minutes of it Fs U up for a while!

5:15pm - 198 yards left, looks like he's got about an 8 iron. gotta love caddyshack, even though watching it on AMC is like kissing your sister (no offense Kyla! :-) ). We're done with the mag & calcium and have 15 minutes of 5FU left. Of course the home care that was supposed to be here at 5:15 is nowhere to be seen... "I don't think the heavy stuff is going to come down for quite some time"! Gotta love it. Jen and I have a thesis that any situation can be responded to by a quote from Caddyshack, Office Space, or Major League. Top Gun is an alternate that can be used in a pinch. So far we haven't found anything to disprove this thesis!

6:00 - done and out the door. I definitely will never be having starbucks on chemo days again. I feel like ass. Here's a transcript of a conversation Jen and I just had.
k: I feel like ass.
j: How do you feel?
k: like ass.
j: can you elaborate on that?
k: yes, I feel like ass.
j: ...
I just generally feel like I had about 6 cans of red bull and am crashing down off of that high. It's gonna be an early night for this cat I can tell you that right now.

Thanks for staying tuned during the day - I hope this isn't too boring to read. It's kinda fun to do as well! Thanks as always for all the comments and prayers - keep them both coming!!!