Bone Marrow Biopsy Results

Steve here. I'm going to add on to my mom's "Results" post.  We heard the results of the biopsy.  The cancer is not in my bone marrow which is a very, very good thing.  Now to discuss treatment.  My options at this point are: I can do chemotherapy for 4 months, and then radiation therapy after the chemo for 4-6 weeks, or I can do 6 months of chemotherapy with no radiation therapy at all.  The catch is, for the radiation, it would be 5 days a week, for 4-6 weeks, and the bad part is that I'd have to go to rochester for that treatment.  So I would have to drive to rochester every week day for 4-6 weeks to get radiation therapy.  The downside of skipping radiation and just doing 6 months of chemo is that some of the drugs used in chemotherapy can be pretty hard on the heart and lungs, so that would be 2 extra months of exposing my heart and lungs to those drugs.  Dr. Cockeril told me in my first meeting with him that it is really quite important to try to continue on with my normal life and try to maintain my normal lifestyle even while going through treatment.  I strongly agree with this and vowed to myself that I would try the best I can to keep leading a normal life including school, work, hopefully baseball this summer, and somewhat of a social life.  My problem with the 4 month chemo plus radiation, is that for me to commit to this treatment plan, I would basically have to throw out all my hopes that I had for this summer of working a lot and saving a bunch of money, and playing baseball, all while finding time to spend with my friends.  So, as far as I'm concerned, driving to Rochester every single day for 4 to 6 weeks is completely out of the question. So as it stands, I'd rather take the 6 months of chemo.  I talked to Dr. Cockeril about this and told him I'd feel much more comfortable if we were to do the radiation therapy here in mankato, and he said he'd talk to Dr. Inwards at Mayo to see what he thinks, so hopefully we can do that.  This is going to be an extremely tough overall decision for me so I've got a lot of thinking to do within the next few days, and I'd like to decide as soon as I can and get this show on the road.  The sooner I start treatment, the sooner I'm cancer free and continuing on with my life.  

I've been getting a little frustrated with all the hoops we've been jumping through to reach an ultimate conclusion at this point and I'm getting incredibly anxious and sick of waiting for everything, but I'm trying as hard as I possibly can to keep a positive attitude, but so far this whole process has been a real test of my patience and optimism.  Anyway I'm giving it my all to look at the big picture and tell myself that although it's in no way fun, it's what's best and I need to keep positive.  It's a real pick-me-up every time I come on this blog and see all the overwhelming support from everyone and it really helps me to remind myself that it'll all turn out for the better. So thank you sooooo much everyone who's been keeping me in their thoughts and prayers, I can feel it all and it helps give me the strength to push through this!

Much love to all,

Steve