Regular visitors here know that I have begun to undergo a series of six immunotherapy treatments designed to beef up my immune system to fight the cancer that doctors first detected in me in late 2004.
As most of you know, I've gone through surgery, radiation, hormone-deprivation therapy (all of which have delayed, not cured, my cancer). It began in my prostate (now gone: surgery) and has metastasized into my bones.
This latest therapy involves three pairs of sessions. For each pair I have T-cells withdrawn at the Akron Red Cross and then reinfused at Seidman Cancer Center (University Circle) a few days later--after those T-cells have been, well, beefed up down in Atlanta.
The first pair of sessions (a few weeks ago) went all right.
The second pair didn't. The nurses at the Red Cross could not access a vein in my left arm.* Eleven "sticks" brought nought but pain and bruises and frustration. And, okay, some anger. We aborted the session when my left arm, from hand to biceps, was, well, a mess. (That arm still looks as if it's been a torture site.)
So ... plans changed. Waiting. Waiting.
And I just got confirmation today about what's going to happen now. On Thursday morning Joyce and I will go down to Seidman, where I'll get a catheter installed near the right side of my neck, a procedure (and a device) that will allow easier access (to my blood!) and quicker sessions. On Friday I will go to the Red Cross for the second withdrawal session ... and on we go.
I'll have the catheter for a couple of weeks until all of this is over.
Which cannot be soon enough!
Anyway, if I do not post here all that regularly in the next couple of weeks, I've got an excuse that even a Mean Teacher Like Me would accept!
*I needed to have both left and right arms accessed: one for withdrawal, one for return after the T-cells have been removed. So ... it goes like this: blood out of one arm, blood into a machine to steal the T-cells, blood back in the other arm. Takes several hours.
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