Baldies' Blog began originally in the UK by a 26 year old journalist with a blood cancer on a mission to inform the world about bone marrow donation.

He has since died, and I took on the cause of making cancer care more transparent for everybody.

Cancer is a disease that will touch everybody through diagnosis or affiliation: 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed and 1 in 3 woman will hear those words, "You Have Cancer."

I invite you to read how I feel along my journey and
how I am continuing to live a full life alongside my Hodgkin's lymphoma, with me controlling my cancer, not my cancer controlling me.

I hope that "Baldies' Blog" will prepare you to handle whatever life sends you, but especially if it's the message, "You Have Cancer."

Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

There is a silver lining in every cloud of gray

I'm playing catch up from our family weekend in NY. I'm catching up on rest first, then catching up on writing, chores, shopping, laundry, organizing our first Relay Meeting and upcoming Volleyball Tournament Sunday May 22 (start making your team!).

I'm taking a break from catching up to tell you all my PET scan results from Monday.

My scan is still positive, but the cancer has significantly decreased!!
This is a fabulous finding since I've only been taking 60% of the recommended dose to treat Hodgkins.
The disease is so significantly reduced we are considering not raising the dose and keeping it at 60% for the treatment duration.
Hooray to both health and Treatment!

Now, I just wish there was a way to manipulate the Bendamustine, changing it minimally, so the cancer doesn't recognize it, mutate, and grow.
This is a concept not used in American Cancer Treatment, but used among foreign practitioners, specifically Dr. Wong, the naturopath I met with this past weekend.

2 comments:

B. said...

Glad the Bendamustine is working, it's put me in remission after four years. And now six months out -- still in remission :) Hoping it does the same for you.

I agree with the scaling of the drug, Dr. O does that with all of his patients -- in the beginning I only received 1/3 of the drug for my first two cycles for my weight/body type because i was so weak, then we increased it a bit once we saw it was working. But the reverse is always good too. I think my last cycle, we lowered it again just to give me a bit of a break.

Here's to Benamustine and it being such a wonderful drug for so many lately!

... said...

Actually, Dr. Tricot at Huntsman in Salt Lake is VERY aware of this concept. He likes to go to stem-cell transplant right away because he doesn't want to show the disease any chemo that it will mutate for and wake a monster, like happened in Blaine. Could I tell that story! Needless to say, the Savage family is painfully aware of this concept, and so is some of the US medical community.