Chemo: finished

Yesterday I finished my last session of chemotherapy. If I had more energy I’d cheer! 😀

It’s been a weird time; very dark predictions to begin with back in Spring, then dramatically, in fact unprecedentedly, good ‘half-time’ scan results in Summer: the various places it was (bladder plus lymph glands and a couple of different organs that wanted in on the act) appear to have shrunk to almost or entirely just scar tissue or are actually undetectable. I am, as always, a pragmatic optimist, and my consultants are (now) also optimistic and looking forward to the results of next week’s end-of-treatment scan.

The chemo works cumulatively and savagely, and I’ve been doing it since May. I’m told I’m standing up to it exceptionally well, but all the same I’m pretty weak (oh boy that’s an understatement!) and somewhat ‘immunocompromised.’ It’s going to take a good month before the worst starts to fade, and probably sometime in early 2019 before I’m actually relatively normal.

But yes, I’m coming back! Back to work and back to doing things with friends. One day I may even have a beer again. 😉



tl;dr
I have bladder cancer that had metastasized (seriously not good), but it dramatically shrunk to undetectable levels by halfway through the treatment, flummoxing and delighting my care team. Cross your fingers for the next scan.

And feel free to ask questions. This is real life, there’s no benefit to wasting time pretending it’s not.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.