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| Me. Every day. Some days I think being bald is the better option! |
Last Friday I had an appointment with Dr. Stephens for a routine check-up. He went over my latest PET scan results again and assured us that all is well. The activity that can be seen on the scan is in my Thymus and is benign, so no worries! He felt around on my neck and didn't feel anything, just confirming that I'm actually crazy. But hey, I'll take crazy over cancer any day!! Dr. Stephens did tell me some promising news though. He said that at his most recent conference they discussed the great advances in medications available to treat Hodgkins. He said the new treatments are really, really good. Hopefully I never need them, but at least I know that if it comes back I have options!!
I did have something to discuss with him, though. For the last few months I have been experiencing this thing that the only way I know how to describe is to say it feels like frostbite. My fingertips will turn white and hurt. And it happens when my hands have been exposed to cold, whether that's just walking outside to my car, getting something out of the freezer, or just being in a cool room. And my right hand has been doing this thing where if I am outside in these cold temps for five minutes, even with gloves on, it begins to throb and just hurt. Really hurt. Then it starts feeling really, really cold and starts hurting worse. When trying to warm my hand up, it feels like it is on fire and I'm not exaggerating. It is a hurt that brings me to tears for a minute. Give it ten to fifteen minutes and its all over. So, I of course took to Facebook and Google to diagnose myself. My Hodgkins folks on FB assured me that I had what is called Raynaud's Disease. Seemed legit to me, but I wanted to confirm with Dr. Stephens. After I described all this to him and showed him the following photo, he said without a doubt it is Raynaud's. He then proceeds to tell me that this picture could be in a text book, to which I replied, "I'm pretty sure I am a text book at this point!"
He explained that some chemo drugs can cause this but couldn't say exactly which one did it for me. All he really could say is that it had to be one of the drugs I received prior to my transplant. Dr. Stephens said that this disease rarely gets bad enough to require medication, but if it does it is treated with a blood pressure pill. Ok. Whatever. First Keratoconus, now Raynaud's. Both are not pleasant, but I would rather deal with these things than have cancer!!
This whole notion of being cancer free is finally sinking in and I am starting to stress less and less over the whole situation. This is a great feeling and I am so excited to start training for my first Spartan Race!!!! Anyway, that's all I got. Until next time...
