Saturday, April 14, 2012

Symptoms for past 2 months

Now that I think back, there were 3 obvious symptoms:
1. My numbed left fingers which started about 10 weeks ago, which I've conveyed to the oncologist, It's natural to relate this to side effects of chemo and previous surgical removal of lymph nodes and left breast. Until I started feeling the numbness on my left leg/toes 2 weeks ago, and I told the oncologist on 31 march which he immediately warned me of the possibility of involvement of the brain. I was shaken but didn't quite believe him, as the symptoms were really mild. He referred me to a Neurologist, who examined me, and said it's probably side effects of chemo, so the MRI suggested by my oncologist has not been pursued.
2. There's constipation for the past 1-2 months, which got me worried as my bowel pattern has been so consistent before. Noticing that toxicity must be accumulating in my body, I even started warm water aenema, and did twice over a week's time, as I was still skeptical about the drastic effect of flushing my colon/intestine, etc.
3. My menstruation cycle which was consistent until end of January just stopped in both February and March, and returned a few days ago on 10 April.

The major changes in my treatment were that
1. the oncologist stopped Navelbine(chemo) in January after seeing the result of PET/CT scan, to which I was really pleased about
2. A week of delay in getting Herceptin as I went to Seoul in January

Otherwise, everything else were going great, as I was able to get back life without so many hospital visits/waits just to check the level of blood before/after each chemo.
In fact, I started to associate the numbness of my left hand to holding/using of iphone for the past 2 months. So, maybe I should change phone again.

If indeed my PET/CT end of Dec was indeed clear, and if it could detect up tumor to 0.5 cm, the growth rate of my brain tumor must be really aggressive, doubling every 30 days or so, to grow to the current 2.8 cm within 100 days.

So, what should I do now apart from taking drugs?
- communicate with my body and ask, what went wrong? There must have been cells which have been neglected all these while, when I'm busy making new traveling plans.
- restart a routine which allow me to monitor every little response of my body, and device a checklist to plot the progression/regression
- watch my diet and nutritious intakes,
- regular exercise (qi gong, and not the games like ping pong, basketball, etc)
- reduce phone/internet time

In the past 2 months, there were also 2 episodes which were associated with my tumor"
1. I banged my left chest against the wall while trying to rescue the basketball from falling over the chest level height wall, and as a result, I suffered physical pain for at least 3 weeks, and that was dated end of February.
2. There was an episode of suspected chicken pox, as I discovered rashes on my body. The oncologist smiled and just gave me some medicine and cream. The rashes, believed to be side effect of chemo subside within the next 2-3 days.

So, I believe every little jigsaw pieces is related, but just not sure how...

1 comment:

  1. Gambate Kudasai!

    You may find some facts on the possible effect of radiafrequency energy on brain tissues in cell phone use at http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones

    The model of phone does matter as well as the distance between the phone and your body or brain. See http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/AtHome/cellular-phones

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