Saba Beats Cancer

The food here is not good at all. So yesterday I used Uber Eats from my room for the first time to get Chinese delivered and it was magical compared to the normal dinners here.  Had plenty of left-overs for tonight and we do have a patient fridge so all is much better.  Got my fortune below Doing little things well is a step towards doing big things better Interesting - I guess getting the chemo done s the little thing towards being cured. Reached out another double hit guy who is on chemo 5 and he just went into remission. He is on the board of the Lymphoma Research Foundation and says docs probably will not shorten treatment if at all.  Double hit is so bad that if it comes back, it is tough to beat a second time. So they want to make sure it is really gone. Oh well - this is still the halfway point if it is full treatment and I will be done in June, recovered in July. When I walk every day, there are not many places I can go - so I walk the halls and there a...

Not easy to clock 1.5 miles walking the hallways but I don't want blood thinners and I want the MTX out so I can get outta here.  So we walk.  I am at a score of 1.5 MTX in my system after 24 hours which is good but not 0.1 - that's what I need to leave.  No one will estimate the timing because everyone is so different and they don't want to disappoint you.  So drink a lot, walk, pee - repeat.  They also pump an anti MTX drug and some potassium because I was low.  I ordered a banana with breakfast but they were out of bananas but they have plenty of pills. More irony. In many ways we didn't have much time to dwell on the fact I have a very bad cancer. We had to move fast and knew we had to stay positive to kick it and we know we are good at that.  But every once in a while it really hits you with the gravity of the situation and losing the hair and sitting in line at the barber shop was one of those times when you just get overcome with the emotion o...

Well I wanted to get started and I get my wish. Problem is I have double hit large B cell lymphoma. Cells are mutating making them grow faster and harder to kill. Luckily NIH found the R EPOCH therapy regimen and got similar outcomes to regular lymphoma. The bad news is you get each chemo session over 5 days in the hospital every 21 days. Plus they may add another drug in between. Aggressive cancer equals aggressive treatment. The double hit describes the two mutations that are happening. (and yes double secret probation immediately flashed into my mind). You don't find that until a few days after the biopsy so this was a late breaking update to my diagnosis.  Quite the gut punch - but we kind of knew things were growing pretty fast. Not totally unexpected So a really really rough road ahead. But these guys got it down and they love our chances of kicking this just as hard as it’s kicking me.  I cannot tell you how great our team at MD Anderson was today - our doctor is pr...