I don’t even know where to begin. It would take me way too long to write this in any sort of interesting way, so I think I’m just going to try to list out all the stuff that’s happened:

• As I wrapped up Cycle 3, I started feeling very nauseous. The taste of the saline flush through my IV (yes, you can taste it) made me gag. I couldn’t eat anything. I was fully conditioned to hate anything and everything associated with chemotherapy. Blech.
• Starting that Friday and into the weekend I was getting very sick to my stomach. By Sunday morning I was vomiting every couple of hours. None of the anti-nausea meds offered any relief, and even vomiting didn’t help. I felt so sick I couldn’t even lie down flat. I had to be on my back with my knees up.
• By Tuesday, I was in the ER. There wasn’t a whole lot they could do, but I was severely dehydrated so they gave me 2L of saline and some IV meds.
• The nausea had started to subside after my trip to the ER, but I got a pretty sharp pain in my back, which I assumed to be from lying in the same position for the past 5 days. It made it very hard to breath or cough. I also spiked a fever and the slightest movement caused my heart rate to spike.
• By Friday, Dr. Kahn told me to get a CT scan to check for blood clots in my lungs. Sure enough, there were blood clots. And pneumonia. They put me on Xarelto and an antibiotic and sent me on my way. I assumed this would be the last of it. I was wrong.
• On Monday I went out to lunch with my dad and Jenna, and developed a little nose bleed. No big deal, right? Wrong. This thing would not stop. After about 45 minutes of constant bleeding, we went to the ER. Unfortunately with a blood thinner like Xarelto, there’s nothing they can really do to stop the bleeding, except take a trip down memory lane to somewhere around the 1400’s. The ER doc came at me with a 6″ long balloon device and just said, “This is going to go in your nose all the way down to the back of your throat.” Uh, ok. I had no idea what was in store for me. He started shoving that thing in and it went on FOREVER. After it was fully inserted he inflated the thing with a syringe. Every muscle in my body contracted, I screamed a couple times, and saw nothing but lightning bolts. Once he was done, it just kept burning and burning, and the pressure was almost unbearable. The first ENT said it would need to stay in for a week due to the blood thinners and my low platelet counts, but there’s no way. I’m off the blood thinner for now and I’m hoping to get this crap out on Friday. It’s horrible. If anyone ever says they want to put a balloon up your nose, you punch that person in the face.
• Anyway, Dr. Kahn’s on vacation (I had no idea), so I went in to see Dr. Eisner to follow up on all this. He took me off the Xarelto for the time being, but since pulmonary embolisms are very much life-threatening, he wanted me to get an IVC filter put in place. So, off to surgery. Basically, this is a device where they make an incision on your jugular vein and drop a little umbrella-like object down your inferior vena cava. This will hopefully catch any blood clots before they reach critical areas like the lungs, heart, or brain. Once I’m fully recovered they  can remove the device and likely put me back on blood thinners.

Anyway, that should just about bring you up to speed. Sorry it’s not all positive kickassery this time.

Oh wait, there was one piece of good news I forgot to mention:

After I started having the adverse stomach reactions to Cycle 3, Dr. Kahn decided to reach out to the one and only, Dr. Larry Einhorn (if you recall, he’s the inventor of this testicular cancer treatment and widely regarded as the guru of the industry). Dr. Kahn shared with him my disease details and the treatment I’ve received so far, and Dr. Einhorn responded that he is “very comfortable” with me not doing a 4th cycle. That was absolutely phenomenal news to hear, but unfortunately basically every day since then has been one disaster after another.

So, at least for now, there’s no 4th chemo cycle. I just need to get this crap out of my nose, get the blood clots under control, and hope the pneumonia is just a little blip and my lungs go back to normal.