Printing

My darkroom is running! On tuesday, I finally settled on a layout and got it approved with the Boss. I put a board across the washer and dryer for the developing trays, set up a small table for the enlarger directly across from the toilet. Tuesday night I mixed up all my chemicals. Last night when dad got home from work, we went to the hardware store for some weather stripping and plumbing hardware, and I made my first prints last night. I was lucky that the guy who sold me the equipment had some boxes of paper and some paper developer that wasn't too old. I think today I will get out the negitives of Kelsey and I that I wasn't able to finish printing before I graduated and left for Japan last year.

Chemo Part 2

I had my second dose of chemo on Thursday, and it was worse, like I've been told it would. This time, the nurse hit a valve in my vein, so it took two tries to get the IV in me, but the infusion went okay. Nausea has been worse this time though. The thing that's really bothering me though is my insurance company. They've restricted my nausea medication to 12 pills in a 23 day period. The instruction say to take it 3 times daily as needed, so you can see the problem here. I haven't really needed it too much, but I currently have only 3 pills left, and if I needed them, I wouldn't be able to get more without paying $45 a pill. Luckily, there's a process that the doctor and pharmacy can start to get me more. The insurance company just doesn't like paying $45 per pill if they don't absolutely have to.

I got my darkroom stuff on Wednesday! I'm very happy with what I got. I'm sure that it's worth far more that what I bought it for, and everything is in great condition. Now I've got to figure out where it's all going to go. It will be pretty easy to black out a room, but right now, I can't figure out how to fit it into the utility room with the tables I've got. I don't want to have developer chemicals in my room obviously, so I'll have to get a few brains together, and maybe some wood, a drill and some screws together to work on it. I think I can have my first prints made in a week.

Ai and I have bee talking about when she's going to come here again. She's going to Austria and Germany for 2 weeks at the end of September, and she's got another break in October, but I think it'd be nice for her to come in December. She's worried about if other people will mind. You wont will you?

Darkroom coming

It looks like I've found a dark room. I my room. I found what I think will be a nice setup for only $125 including the enlarger, two lenses, a color head, and everything I need for developing prints and film. The enlarger is a nice model, though kind of old, and will be able to do both my 35mm and medium format films. I've convinced mom that I need something like this in order to not die of boredom, and that I'll be a really good son if she finances the purchase. So she's at the ATM now getting the cash. I'll go to the guy's house today to take a look at it and make sure that everything is in working order, and if so, probably buy it.

Tomorrow is my second dose of chemotherapy. I'll go in at 8 am with dad again. I've been feeling completely fine since about 4 days after the last dose. I don't know how the cumulative affects are, but I don't think I should expect anything worse than last time. I've noticed that since before I started treatment, I have a lot more energy, which is not what you'd expect. But before I started treatment, I was in pretty bad shape. Just a short walk was very slow, and left me huffing and puffing, especially if it was up hill. Last weekend I was in Seattle, and I stopped at the SCCA for a second, and when walking up the hill, I was at my normal fast speed, and wasn't huffing and puffing when I was done. However, last week I decided to go on a bike ride, and only made it a mile before I was exhausted. If I didn't have two dogs to look after right now, I'd take a ride and see how I am.

Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai.

Gotta love Adult Swim

Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's late night, always has little text blurbs in their commercial breaks. Tonight it was:

Netherlands: $6.63
UK: $6.21
Germany:$5.99
Italy:$5.91
France:$5.74
Japan:$4.45

Try to keep in mind what the rest of the world is paying before you all start going "Road Warrior" on each other.

And just a little graph I found that's sort of related.

Affecting me

The day after that last post, I started to feel why chemo isn't much fun. I woke up the day after writing my last post, and threw up before I was able to take my anti-nausia medicine. After that, I was more careful about listening to my stomach and taking my medicine when I felt problems coming on. It's been a few days now since I've had any problems with nausea, but my weekend at the cabin was anything but relaxing, and I was exhausted when I got home. There were so many people down there this weekend, that I had to escape to Annette's house a few times for some peace and quiet. I helped her get her internet hooked up, and brought my wireless router over and got her addicted to it. That night and the next morning were enough to get her addicted to sitting on the couch with a laptop, and she went out and bought a wireless router the next day. My work was done, and I was able to take mine back home.

Chemo Update

Hey, I survived my first chemo session! Actually, it was pretty anti-climatic. Dad and I got there at 8 am and were shown around the infusion floor. There are about 50 rooms, each with a bed, comfy looking chair, and a TV. There are also heated cabinets filled with warm blankets, and a couple of food rooms that we can raid for juice, water, cookies and other things.

The chemo itself was pretty much like Marcia said. First they hooked up an IV with a drip which made me cold as the stuff entered my veins, and injected me with one of the drugs to make sure that I wasn't allergic to it. After waiting for me to not be allergic to it for an hour, they started with the other drugs, and just let them drip into me. I was there for 4 hours thursday, but only because it was my first time. I think it should take only 1 or 2 hours from now on.

After all the bad things I've heard about chemo, so far this is a piece of cake. They gave me some anti-nausia drugs that cost $425 for 10 pills, and some anti-anxiousness drugs that they said was basically strong Valium, and would also work really well if I was having trouble sleeping. So far, I haven't felt sick or anything at all, but I guess it will be the second dose in two weeks that will do me in. I think it builds up to be worse the second time. We'll see.

This is the Day!

It's 5:55am, and I'm having breakfast and getting ready to go in for Chemo. I have to be in Seattle by 8:00, but since trafffic around here is so unpredictable, we will leave at 6. We'll probably get to Seattle way too early, but there's always the chance that traffic will be really bad, and we'd be late if we didn't leave this early.

I talked to the nurse that is in charge of my treatment yesterday, about what will be happening. For the last week, I've had a pain in my shoulder and neck that is probably caused by the tumor in my neck, so I got a pain killer prescription from her for that. She says that once chemo starts, the tumors will probably dissolve so quickly that not only will the pain in the neck go away, but I will probably have a strange feeling in my chest from all the organs and my lung moving back into their proper places. They will be giving me some medication to counter the effects of all that broken down tumor tissue entering my bloodstream to prevent it from becoming toxic. Also in the coming weeks, I will have to start watching how and what I eat to prevent bacteria that would normally not effect me, from making me sick as my white blood cell count lowers.

That's all for now. I'll try to post when I come back.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

After spending the week reading over medical journals on Hodgkin's treatments, I've decided to go with ABVD for my treatment. It was quite hard to make the decision based only on the affects of the treatment, because each negative seemed to have some positive that outweighed it. Going through the medical journal articles, I was able find some that compared the overall success of ABVD and Stanford V directly. Some of the earlier studies only showed that Stanford V was an effective treatment, but the later studies showed that Stanford V was not as effective as ABVD. Over all, rate of reoccurrence of disease seems to be higher with Stanford V, and the long term cure and survivability rates of ABVD are much higher.

The possibility of lung and heart damage still worries me, but I have found some information on the Nation Cancer Institute website about supplements that seem to make the heart and lungs resist damage while taking the drugs that cause it, so I will ask my doctor about that. I still have one more appointment at the UW hospital next tuesday (relating to Meg's concern of not having any little Aarons running around) so I will be starting my chemo next thursday. I've just called them up and let them know, so they will be arranging things and calling me in the next few days to get things set up. I kind of wish I could just start it today though. I'm not as impatient as I was before, but it'd still be nice to get it going.

So doing nothing this weekend. Maybe I'll be able to get my film developed. One is going to be hard. I'll either have to trick them into thinking it's regular film, convince them that developing this non-regular film will not cause their machines to blow up, or take it somewhere that understands ( and charges $20 per roll...)

Choices, Choices, Choices

Last friday, I had my second appointment with my doctors, and they discussed their findings and the two treatment options. The CT-scan and PET-scan both showed that nothing has gotten worse since my scans in Tokyo, and also that it has not spread beyond my lymph system and spleen. Therefore, there are two ways they can treat me. ABVD, named for the four toxic chemicals they will pump through my body, or Stanford V, named for the five toxic chemicals they will pump through my body, and the institution that developed it.

ABVD is what has been used for Hodgkin's for the last 20 or more years, and is pretty tried and true. It will be 6 courses, lasting a month each, injected every 2 weeks. The side affects are hair loss, nausea, general crappieness, etc. in the short term, and possible heart and lung scarring in the long term.

Stanford V is a newer treatment developed by stanford, but it too has been around for a while. But because of the relative rarity of Hodgkin's, it's still in trails. The main benefit of Stanford V is that it takes only half the time of ABVD. It would be 3 months, with injections every week. The short term side affects are about the same as ABVD, but one of the ingredients is something called nitrogen mustard, a derivative of mustard gas. It was one of the first chemicals used for cancer treatment, but has long since been replaced with others. Now it is back, but in much lower doses. Some of the side affects are sterility and a possible reassurance of other forms of cancer. In the old days, this would be about a 15% chance. With the Standford V, my doctors have said that it's probably 1 to 2%, and sterility is also uncommon. Also, with Stanford V, less of the chemicals that could cause heart and lung scarring are used in lower doses.

The nitrogen mustards sound pretty ugly, but really, it's a pretty close call. ABVD has been successfully used for a long time, but its 6 months and has a risk of scarring, while Stanford V is much quicker and has a lower risk of heart and lung scarring, but has a tiny chance of causing a secondary cancer.

I am worried about the possible heart or lung problems, and I like the 3 months vs. 6 months of the Stanford V, but I don't like the 1 to 2% re-occurance rate vs. .1% of ABVD. So right now I'm still trying to decide between the two. Treatment will probably start friday.

Seeing People

I finally went to see some doctors last friday. I am going to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which is a building on the corner of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center on Lake Union in Seattle. I have two doctors, one who is staff at the Cancer Care Alliance, and the head doctor, Stephen Petersdorf, who is a professor of Oncology at the UW. Last friday, we talked about the disease, treatment, and got some more tests and a CT-scan done.

This week, I will have 3 appointment, including a PET-scan at he UW Medical Center, and an appointment to finalize the treatment plans. Probably, I will start treatment by next week. I'm happy about deciding to come here because I think its the best possible place I could choose to have treatment. I don't like how long its going to take, but I have no other choice but to stay and finish everything before I get my life back on track.

I have a bunch of film sitting in the fridge, so if anyone knows someone with a negative scanner, let me know. I had to leave mine in my apartment in Tokyo.