There's My Voice

Finally, I can speak.  My Internist's suggestion of using a Neti pot to rinse my sinuses, followed by Verimyst nasal spray is making a difference. That and the meds for GERD (go ahead, laugh, it does sound funny), which can also affect the voice, seem to be helping my voice make a comeback.  What a relief.

I did get the okay to have chemo today.  I dutifully showed up at 8:15 am (okay, I was 15 minutes late) for the xray and then dutifully ran back to the Katzen Cancer Center at Medical Faculty Associate building to find out what I needed to do next. Such a good patient. Such a, I can't control this, so I'll do what I need to do to get this sucker done patient.  The front desk told me to come back at 12:30 since Dr. Kaltman will have seen the xray at that point and have a decision.  Dutifully again, I showed up at 12:00 (early this time), and when the front desk placed the hospital bracelet on my wrist, allowing me back into the the chemo lounge, I said, "I'm good to go for chemo?"  When the answer was yes, I began jumping up and down and crying, "I get to have chemo! I get to have chemo!" The folks around began to laugh and one staff member remarked that everyone should be like me about chemo.  Why not? It's saving my life.

And here's more good news.  My liver enzyme numbers continue to hold, dropping 1 point each for AST (SGOT) and ALT (SGPT), which is fine since if they kept dropping dramatically as they had been, they might go to zero and I might be dead the other way. 

But a new number has appeared, tumor markers.  My doctor took a baseline breast cancer CA 27.29 tumor marker before I started chemo.  That number was 565.6, not the highest in the world but still pretty high.  The doctor tested the number again on 3/2/2012, after the third chemo.  The result was 218.4, a 61% drop after only three treatments. 

So woohoo, gang. Woohoo. Another dramatic moment in Soozi body numbers and another number to feel proud of.  I may have bombed by GREs (I did, really) but I seem to rock in the Taxol/Herceptin killing the cancer numbers. If I had to choose which test to do better at, I'm rooting for the one that means I get to live. Wouldn't you?