Feeling the Effects of Dragon Poison

One of the big challenges of handling any significant challenge is to appropriately deal with expectations.

We often dot our path with self-created expectations of what should happen and when and are often disappointed and poorly prepared when things don’t turn out according to our schedule.  I have joked for several years privately, especially since the onset of heart problems, that I gave God a list of expectations---an agenda of sorts---but He seems unwilling to use my agenda for His roadmap of what has happened to me.  He is not allowing my spiritual immaturity to get in the way of grander eternal designs.

Enter the reality of dealing with AL amyloidosis, the unbeatable foe, and the methods currently being used to treat this problem.  Note I use the word treat, not cure.

Chemotherapy and stem cell transplants are the two phrases thrown around when the subject of dealing with my disease/cancer comes up.  Like many, I had expectations of what chemotherapy was going to be like. 

I was going to be hooked up to an IV, where a yellowish substance---a dragon poison of sorts---would flow into my body, which in turn would cause me to violently throw up all night long.   Since I have 15 weeks of chemo before doctors determine whether my body can handle stem cell treatments, the visual of being Rocky Balboa and being battered and wobbling around the ring came to mind.  Fifteen rounds of it. 

All chemos are not the same, not even close.  I was told from the onset mine would be milder and different.  How different I couldn’t have imagined.  I take special drugs in a very timely basis every Friday and then take 15 chemo pills and then go to Huntsman Cancer Institute for a second treatment, an injection in the stomach once a week.

The first week I had lunch at Huntsman as I waited on an injection into the stomach.  The injection is slow and steady, much like the one I had weekly with broken femurs, but really a pretty mild one.  I felt no immediate side effects on going home.

Week two got even better.  I had lunch and then a second helping of pizza as I waited for my injection.  I went home and then found chemo to be much like taking a 20-hour energy drink.  I didn’t go to sleep until 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, as my mind and heart raced.

My wife warned that the impact of chemo might be more cumulative than anything.  She was right.  Week three I went through the same routine, minus the lunch at Huntsman, and came home and found my body racing on a “speed” of sorts until 5 a.m. on Saturday.    Then a strange thing happened.  The chemo seemed to kick in and my defense shields went down and the amyloids went to town and seemed to attack the organs and nervous system without any limitations. 

Things got to the point Saturday night and Sunday morning that I had to crawl from bed to the bathroom to try and deal with the nausea, dizziness, chills and heart issues, among others.  It left me battered, but wiser for the experience.  I did throw up a few times, among other reactions.

Because I have now felt a new effect of the dragon poison, I can realistically say the stuff is also working.  That seems the only real important expectation of hope that is really important at this point.  After all, Rocky staggered a lot but was standing when the bell rang to end the bout.