This morning we were back in Salt Lake for
another follow up at the fertility clinic. Because the process is pretty time
sensitive they like to track how I am responding to the medications so they
know exactly the right time to do the retrieval. Luckily those appointments are
pretty quick. After seeing how things looked the doctor had me increase the
dose of one of the medications. Overall she was pretty happy with how things
were going. Because I am young and healthy they are very optimistic that
everything will turn out well.
After
that appointment we went to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. We had an
appointment with a lymphoma specialist there. She has been treating lymphoma
patients for 20 years and we were really interested to get her thoughts on
treatment options and my situation in general. After our conversation with her,
we felt even better about the treatment option we had already been leaning
towards. Even though ABVD took twice as long, it was less likely to cause long
term side effects. The specialist had used both methods in the past and is now
using ABVD almost exclusively. She was also much more optimistic about my
chances of not losing fertility, and my ability to undergo chemo without being
too sick. This was encouraging, and has helped me be less afraid of the
upcoming 6 months of treatment.
On the
drive home Chase and I talked more about the way things were progressing and
how we felt about our decisions so far. Now that we had a second opinion
agreeing that I was a stage 3 and needed longer treatment we were so glad we
had decided to go ahead with the fertility preservation. We also felt confident
in our choice of chemo regimen, not only because of how proven it was, but
because hopefully by having treatment every other week we would be able to
still have something of a normal life.
Getting home was a bit of a reality
check. Chase had a test the next day and hadn't even started studying. We
knew at this point it was going to take some serious divine intervention to
help us keep our grades afloat. We spent several hours studying together, with
me quizzing him. Unfortunately I wasn't a very good study partner and fell
asleep on the couch pretty quickly. Chase did a good job though and by the time
we went to bed he felt almost prepared for his exam. Hopefully he’ll have a few
more hours tomorrow before the exam to study.
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