This was originally an email written to my family and friends on the date above. I decided to make these public in the event they may be helpful to someone in the future who is embarking on a similar journey to mine.
Hi Everyone–
I’m very glad that this is the next-to-last treatment in this round of chemo!
Nothing too exciting to report. The side-effects and fatigue are piling up a bit as expected – the chemo has a cumulative effect, but everything is still manageable. There aren’t too many surprises about the process, effects, etc. at this point. The doctor did cut the Oxaliplatin completely for the last 2 treatments (yay!); this is the drug that is responsible for most of the side effects. Cutting this drug during the treatment is common, he said I tolerated it longer than most.
After today’s shorter treatment we stopped briefly by the mall for errands and on arriving home I fell into bed and slept hard for 4+ hours. I woke up for a half hour here and I think I’ll be going back to bed shortly. Such is chemo.
I had a shorter than usual work week last week as some friends from California came to visit and we went up to the mountains for a very enjoyable weekend with them. I was able to get in a couple of rounds of golf; trying to keep my game somewhat in shape in preparation for my golf trip in mid-September.
Work is going well; my team is doing great and I’m making progress on a variety of projects that I’m excited about. My biggest challenge at the moment is prioritizing between a bunch of things that I want to see get done. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue to make progress on them this week between my naps.
My doctor seemed cautiously optimistic today. We’ll know more after the next PET scan in a month or so, but he thought it was reasonable to expect a clean scan based on the good readings in the previous scan. If the PET scan comes back clean again, we can consider the cancer to be in remission. If there are any “hot spots”, we’ll deal with those as appropriate (more chemo, radiation, surgery, etc. based on what they see). I know it’s statistically likely to come back at some point, but at this time I’m making my plans assuming I’ll get another clean PET scan. That would mean no additional immediate treatment needed, with scans/checkups every few months to monitor. 
Just one more scheduled chemo treatment after today – I’ll be very glad to see them end.
This post is part of the thread: Cancer – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.