Feb 12th – Update – a “yo-yo” life for now

Every time I think I will be on top of updates and just taking time to write some more it seems that time just seems to fly by. For instance, I’m still having a hard time processing that it’s Feb 12^th, 2021. Then comes the ups and downs, a two-week “yo-yo” process that begins with my Wednesday treatments.

It’s a little different each time, but it takes me a solid 4 days or so to get over the initial hit of treatment (which is a bit relative since the treatment starts on Wednesday, but isn’t really over until Friday morning with a pump I take home with me. The fatigue, nausea, and just this feeling of not being able to concentrate dominates this time. Then a few days of slowly recovering until I am feeling good once again. Then comes a week of feeling great and feeling like a regular person again.

So, in short, I am feeling better and better overall. The treatments aren’t easy, but health wise I believe it’s only getting better. I’m back up to my normal weight now, building back some level of strength/cardio, and my blood markers continue to be great (normal levels). Blood tests are about as regular as I have ever had as well, other than a few being impacted by the treatments.

And now comes time to start backing off of chemo. We’d already taken a piece off these past two treatments, but the next one will be even bigger. Turning into only immunotherapy and the take home pump (or hopefully we can turn it into the pill form). The pill would be every three weeks and the immunotherapy every 4 weeks, so it will be less overall trips and hopefully much less of the side effects as well.

The only other piece that will come up soon is the next scan. Amazingly enough it’s already been 2 months since my last one. We’re just trying to see if we can get a PET scan ordered instead of a CT scan, so my doc can get a more complete picture of where the stomach tumor stands, etc. If we can’t do that, we’ll fall back to the CT scan.

For those of you that I have been delayed on responding, etc., I apologize. I have always had a tendency to go inward and just focus on the essentials when things start to get overwhelming, and with the treatments having me on this up and down roller coaster, it’s just been difficult to stay on top of everything. Then we can add the fun of doing this all during a pandemic and trying to get our swimmers in the water, in a safe environment, for their physical and emotional wellbeing.

That’s the ride I’ve been on recently, but don’t worry about me. I’m fighting through with all the hope and positivity that I have, and I will get through this. I’ve said from the start that I am ready to fight for every day that I can, and while this journey has been more difficult, it will not stop my fight. So instead of fighting the fatigue like I am normally driven to do, I rest. I take care of essentials, but otherwise focus on taking care of myself first.

As always, I can’t thank you all enough for the love and support that you offer me during this time. #TEAMjeff offers me continual strength the fight through these times, and that support has been unbelievable!