I can see!

I picked up my new glasses today and was amazed on the drive home when I stopped at a traffic light that I could read the magazine covers at a stand on the footpath! Can't wait to see what my vision will be like once I get cataract surgery at the end of chemo!

I also got a call from Travis at the Blood & Cancer Center, saying that he had been advised by the drug company that make Brentuximab that I was required to be on 20mg or less of Prednisone and could I drop down from 25 to 20 as of tomorrow. (I'd actually pointed this out to both my Oncologist and Haematologist that it was a requirement of the clinical trials to be on no more than 20mg.. but no one listens )  ;)

Weening of prednisone is one of my biggest goals in life, second only to beating this cancer.
Just hope my lung inflammation doesn't flare up and cause all sorts of issues with my Brentuximab treatment. Fingers crossed!

..Ron

Adcetris / Brentuximab has arrived.

Finally the new drug has arrived in the country. Richard Isaacs my oncologist sent me a text this morning to say it had arrived and that he would like to start treatment on Feb 13th 2012.

The CT scan results came in a few days back too.. a couple of modestly enlarged (2.5 to 3cm) lymph nodes in both my abdomen and pelvis. Not a lot else to see. The radiologist had no idea what to make of my lungs, the left lung being a total mess. I said to Dr Isaacs that my lungs were a bit of an enigma, no one's really sure what was going on there... lymphoma or BOOP or fibrosis. My spleen is still slightly enlarged too.

He asked if I still wanted to continue with the Brentuximab in light of the CT scan. I think he was thinking of waiting until I was in worse shape.. what I call the parachute effect. But I was in a pretty bad state a couple of months ago and the idea of the Vinorelbine was to get me to this stage so I'd be in better shape for the new treatment. I said I wanted continue and that my low blood counts showed that I still had some degree of marrow involvement that needed to be considered.

So here I am, in pretty good shape and hopefully going to get a whole lot better.
It's not like there's a huge cancer burden to get rid of.. just a spring clean! (well that's my theory!)

Hey here's a laugh.. further to yesterday's drama where I fitted larger brakes to my car only to find the wheels no longer fitted..
I purchased later model STi wheels today from the guy on Trademe, they fitted perfectly and he only wanted $150 for the whole set, an absolute bargain. I dropped both sets of wheels off at the tyre shop this morning to have the tyres swapped over expecting to pay about $90 for the job. Later in the day I got a phone call from the tyre shop saying they had a buyer for my old wheels for $200 and there was no charge on the fitting of my new ones!
Talk about falling down the toilet and coming up with gold teeth! ..or in this case.. Gold wheels!  :)

Cheers!   ..Ron

Drugs, Vision, Brakes and Privacy.

Not a word on when I will see the arrival of Brentuximab. All I can do is wait and hope that maybe it will arrive by the end of the week in time to be sent up to Auckland where it will be mixed and prepared and then sent back via Air courier to Palmerston North on the day it's administered. Apparently it has a 12 hour shelf life once mixed and it can only be prepared by a particular drug company in Auckland.

I had my eyes tested today and have ordered a new pair of glasses to get me through until I'm in a position to have cataract surgery at the end of the chemo, Probably in about six months.
The optometrist said my eyes were still in pretty good shape, no glaucoma and the optic nerve looked very good, so no diabetes damage either. It's nice to know I'm not going to go blind any time soon!

One thing he did say with regards to cataract surgery that was very exciting is that the lens they put back in would be tailored to suit my vision, so I'd actually have better vision than I did previously, no astigmatism for instance, which I've always had. He said if people knew just how good their sight was going to be after the surgery they wouldn't put it off for years like some often do. He said it's like having the sight of a teenager again, more vibrant colours and clarity.

I should have some new glasses by Friday, I'm getting new lenses fitted to a set of frames I bought about seven years ago but barely used. They are light weight Titanium and cost a me a small fortune, so I figure I'd better get some use out of them.

After a busy day yesterday working on a Celica GT4 suspension job, I thought I'd take it easy today and do some repairs on my Impreza STi road car. The brakes on it are terrible from the factory so after finding a set of later model up-rated brakes on Trademe at a very good price I decided to fit those today as well. All went well, everything bolted up perfectly and they looked great!..
That was until I went to fit the wheels back on!! They don't clear the larger brake calipers, so now I have a car with great brakes and no wheels! DOH! 

As luck would have it there was a guy selling a set of factory STi Subaru alloy wheels on Trademe that fitted correctly with the new brakes. What was really scary, and is probably a sign of just how small this world is getting, is that when I entered his phone number into my phone to call him, his name came up automatically! Apparently we are Facebook friends due to our motorsport connections.

It's scary to think that Google that has all this info can link everyone that has ever entered anything into any of the many arms of the Internet that it controls. Everything from Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, Google's search engine or even this Blog. They know my details and they know the details of everyone I know and every connection as it fans out from there. The fact that they hide the information from us is supposed to make us believe we have privacy.  Scary!!