4. The End Of Remission

As my luck would have it, 8 months after the FCR chemo finished, and just about a year after my initial diagnosis of CLL I had officially relapsed.  

Crap I thought, wasn't I supposed to get 3 to 5 years?  I only got 8 months! 

Lymph nodes were starting to pop out everywhere.  It got to the point where I could have passed for a chipmunk with a cheek full of nuts.  And the lymph nodes under my arm pits made me look like I had water wings on.

CT Scans and blood work became the new normal once again and I had lymph nodes growing inside that were huge.  I even had to go in and have one lymph node removed from under my left arm so they could dissect it and do a biopsy of it to determine what is going on with me.

My Oncologist soon affectionately started to call me his problem child!  And he wanted me to see a specialist, so December 2010 saw my wife and I going to see one that was arbitrarily assigned to us in Seattle.

Now I don’t want to get into being a downer here, but this “so called specialist” was nothing but a first class jerk, no emotions, no bed side manner, no personality!  And he told me my only hope was a stem cell transplant and if I did not have one he would be surprised if I lived another 18 months.  But the picture he painted for me having one scared the holy crap out of us!  One being that I would have a 30% chance of not living thru the procedure, then a 60% chance of not living more than 3 years or more.  And with his attitude we promptly fired him and went back to my regular oncologist for help.

My oncologist sure did not agree with what the specialist told us.  And sought counsel with his peers at the clinic, plus wanted to do more research on what to do next. 

January 2011 my Oncology doctor had me start an oral chemo maintenance program.  This was only to keep me on a even keel so to speak, with another treatment to come later.  But he did not want to whack on me too hard so soon after finishing FCR chemo. 

The maintenance consisted of 14 days in a row of taking chemo pills called cytoxin along with a steroid called prednisone for the first 7 days of taking pills.  This went on thru all of 2011, three months on, one month off, and so on for a full 9 months total of maintenance chemo pills.

Never Ever Give Up!