Chemo - Round 12 - NOT!

Saturday evening, while we stood in line outside the Elgin theatre, waiting to go in, a bird shit on Mark's head.  At the time, I said to him, "that's supposed to be good luck" as I laughed and handed him a tissue.  Depending upon how you look at it, Mark's had a lucky couple of days so far this week.

The PICC line issue I told you about the other day ended up being a bigger deal that we originally thought it would be.  On Monday, Mark went to the cancer clinic for his regular, pre-chemo bloodwork.  He'd been advised to go earlier than normal (he typically goes on Tuesday) so the nurses could take a look at the PICC line and try to get it going.

No matter what they did to the line, they could not unblock it.  This happens sometimes.  The nurses paged his oncologist while Mark waited.  When the doctor arrived, he told Mark that he could do one of two things:  they could remove the PICC line, put a new one in, and proceed to his final round of chemo (scheduled for today) or he could have the PICC line removed and be done with it.  Mark didn't hesitate to get that line out and leave, as soon as he could (thank you poopy bird).

Obviously, if this had happened at week 16, there would have been no question, he would have had a new line put in and carried on.  At week 23 however, it's a completely different story and he is happy to be finished with chemo.  We're waiting for an appointment for a follow up CT scan, he has an appointment already scheduled with the oncologist for early December and hopefully, that will be it for a while.  Of course, we expect that he'll continue to be monitored by his surgeons, and the cancer clinic but we're both very relieved and happy to have this chapter over.

His arm is pretty sore where the PICC line is and he is well bandaged (and has to wear the bandage for at least another day).  For the past 24 weeks, he has had to have his arm wrapped up in cling film and rubber bands, to take a shower.  The first wrap-free shower he gets to have will feel amazing I'm sure.  Having the chemo meds out of his system will feel even better but we're a few weeks away from that.

The end of chemo has been a little unceremonious but Mark was never going to ring the bell anyway!

not good

Ugh.

So, we stopped off at St. Elizabeth on our way home from work, like we do every Friday.  Mark needs to have his PICC line cleaned every week.  Normally it's a pretty quick process, we pop in and we're gone in 20 minutes or less.

Today, for the first time in 23 weeks, there was a problem.  The line is blocked.  They tried to unblock it and couldn't.  When he goes for his pre-chemo blood work on Tuesday, the folks at the cancer clinic may be able to do some voodoo on it and get it working again. Could make chemo next week difficult.  Not sure what they will do if it can't get going again but we're trying to not worry about it.

Tomorrow, we head to Toronto for the day and we're going to do our best to not think about PICC lines and chemo and cancer.  We have tickets for the world premiere of "Roger Waters The Wall" at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The men themselves, Roger Waters and Sean Evans are scheduled to appear and participate in a Q&A after the screening.  We're both pretty stoked to have tickets and I think it's just the thing we need to keep our minds off of medical nonsense for a few hours.