Fall quarter ended, and PET checkup

We had beautiful fall this year in Seattle! 

There were few moments in the past few months that I thought and planned about writing a post on my Angie's notes on Hodgkin's lymphoma blog. I failed miserably, and as my excuse, I was drowning in the turmoil of school work and research. Although it was one of the busiest quarter I have ever experienced, it was the most worthwhile one. I felt involved, fulfilled, and accomplished. I also had a very healthy and regular lifestyle; I went to sleep by 10~11pm, and woke up by 6:30am nearly everyday. If I had understood how efficient I can be with such lifestyle, I would have practiced it when I was an undergrad.

Since I began taking hormone medicine, I had been feeling really well. I still do get tired easier than average person, but I have been able to go to school and do well :) I did experience some stomach discomfort, but it's hard to say whether this is a side effects of the medication or just simply stress from school.

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Anyhow, I'm back in Japan now, and I went to get PET scan last week. Today I had an appointment with my doctor in Tsukuba University to hear the result. The test results were negative (hurrah!), and I will not be seeing him until next summer or so.

My doctor said that he normally lets his patients go with no further scheduling if not further cancer cell growth is observed for 5 years.



 

Cause related marketing and...my medication!

Walking with the crowd for Heart Walk in downtown!

Today I participated in 2012 Puget Sound Heart and Stroke Walk with a couple of friends. One of my friend was organizing a team for his company, so I decided to join! Fortunately the Seattle-like weather decided to take a break, which we had a beautiful sunny day! The walk was 3 miles, which made me a bit worried due to my lack of physical strengths, but I made it through!

Ever since I decided to participate in this event, I also came to ponder whether I should be participating the run/walk for lymphoma...which I have discussed in my past blog, it's called Pineapple Classic 5k run with obstacles. 

Honestly, I don't think I have regained my physical strengths enough to challenge this event, so I will most likely not participate.

However, it made me think about the cause/benefit event marketing in the United States. When I registered for the Heart Walk, I was very impressed with their marketing strategies. I had my own page on the event website that shows how much I contributed, how much I have raised, and next milestone for a gift giveaway. I felt strange receiving e-mails that says "XX won a VIP package to Bar & Lounge XYZ" because XX raised the most money last Thursday. I mean it's great that they are able to raise money for preventions and research for heart diseases, but I'm worried that some people may be forgetting the original intention and just taking an advantage of the event.

I also came to realize that I think the U.S. has the most number of cause related event organized in the world. Pink ribbon month (which is October yo!), Relay for Life (American Cancer Society event fighting against cancer, more like raising funds toward stem cell research in my understanding), Dance Marathon (a.k.a THON, a friend from Penn State told me about this before. Benefiting wigs for kids), Step Out: Walk to Stop Diabetes, etc etc etc...I bet every health related society has its own benefit event. And I think Leukima & Lymphoma Society event is one of the smaller ones, probably due to the smaller number of patients and survivors...

Enough about the cause related walk/run, I began taking hormone medication last week. I complained to my doctor in Seattle Cancer Care Alliance that my light fever doesn't seem to leave me, then he looked at my thyroid hormone level from my blood test. It showed somewhat higher level compared to an average person, which may have been caused by the radiation therapy. So he prescribed me a hormone medicine, to lower that level down a bit. So far it seems to be working alright. Although my fever level has not changed, I don't feel the fatigue or exhaustion I used to experience as much. Which is...good I guess?

Back to UW Hall Health

My sweet sweet roommate decorated our apartment with awesome bouquet! So sweet!!

Tomorrow is the end of second week of Autumn quarter at University of Washington! It was fast, but it was quite a bumpy road; I seemed to have caught cold as soon as I arrived Seattle, and my fever did not leave until the end of last week. Indeed, even now, when I get home tired from school my temperature is slightly higher than my average temperature.

There's a saying in Japanese, "body is honest" meaning human body expresses its health condition quite sensitively according to the environment. Whenever my temperature is up, it reminds me of that saying. There were few moments that I felt like maybe I'm not ready to be back at school. I felt like my body was punishing me for coming back to the States. Luckily I'm a lot better than last week, although I still need to be careful not to catch cold or work too hard.

Today I got to be back to UW Hall Health to see a nurse practitioner, who then referred me to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA). Well, I don't know how referral usually works in the U.S. but when I said a nurse referred me, all she did was hand me a phone number to SCCA, which is also available online at seattlecca.org. Fortunately I was able to make an appointment at SCCA within few hours after my visit to the Hall Health, and it's scheduled to be next week Wednesday.

Although it was over one year ago when I first visited UW Hall Health for my swollen left neck, somehow I didn't have any emotional experience when I went there today. I was indifferent; perhaps I was trying not to think about it too much. I was also a bit nervous; it was a similar feeling I had when I visit the hospital in Japan.

Decision making for mind and body health

I had an appointment with my doctor this morning, to hear the results of ultrasound test. The result report produced by ultrasound technician indicated that the lymph nodes may be lymphomas. However, there was no size change of all nodes, and I have no symptoms(1) that show the sign of lymphoma growth; therefore, my doctor thinks that it is unlikely that lymphoma is back.

And my doctor didn't have much idea about the cause of my light fever. He said he never had a patient who experienced continual light fever 3 months after cancer treatments. Although antibiotics won't work on light fevers, he prescribed them in case that the bacterial infection on my tonsil was still active.

The question comes to, am I ready to go back to Seattle? My doctor said just go ahead and if there's any problem I should just come back to Japan. My mom is worried and I understand that. I'm worried, too. But I think not going back to school this autumn will stress me out even more...I can swear that I am not forcing myself to go back. That's for sure. This is what I want to do, and this seems to be the best option available for my body and mind.

I was really hoping that when I get to go back to Seattle, that's the time when I can throw "I kicked the cancer's butt" party, which I saw many cancer survivors from reading their blogs. I guess I won't be able to throw that party for another...4 years perhaps?

Traditional rice fields of Nagano (and a scarecrow made by kindergarden kids)
...I'm beginning to miss Nagano already!

(1) The symptoms that shows the sign of Hodgkin's disease are:

1. High fever (>38 C)
2. Night sweat
3. Weight loss

Ups and downs

Railway on the bridge of
Bessho line in Nagano

I have been very active for the past few weeks, considering where I've been and what I've been up to. However, my body has not been very cooperative unfortunately...I had a light fever last night again. For the past few weeks, I had lots of ups and downs. I feel good one day like a normal person, and the next day I feel sick. I believe my immune system is still not back to normal.

The new academic year of the University of Washington is starting on 24th of September. As of now, my plan is to get back to Seattle next week, and get ready for the school opening. I am nervous of my health condition, but I also don't know how long I should wait. Yes, I agree that my health should be priority, but my quality of life is as important.

People used to tell me that there is a long way to go in my life that there's nothing to rush. I agree that there's nothing to rush, but recently I've been feeling that human life is really short.I want to get back to Seattle to continue on my education again, even if I have to take it slowly.

Next week I get to hear the results of my ultrasound exam from last week. Unless there is anything urgent or serious, I am going to get on the flight back to Seattle.

My doctor suggested that I find a doctor in Seattle in case of emergency. Also, since he suggests that I take ultrasound exam every 3 months or so, so I think I will be back in Japan again in December.

Olympians, ultrasound result, another light fever, and another injured man in the lab

My heart pounded when I saw Kitajima so close!!

First of all, yes, I was one of the 500,000 people that rushed to Ginza last Monday (well, I was actually near there to run some errands as well) to see Olympians parade! It was SO crowded...I waited for 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad, and I got to see almost everyone I wanted to see so that was super exciting!


Last Friday I went in to the hospital to have my second ultrasound exam, then this week I got to hear the results. I thought this was going to be my last visit to the hospital in Japan for awhile, hopefully shake hands with my doctor and say "see you next year" (because I remember him saying that after all these I would just be checking my body once a year with him).  Unfortunately, it wasn't the case.

All my lymph nodes, or more like lymphomas, though they appear hyperechoic and inactive, they managed to increase its number. Last month ultrasound image showed three lymph nodes, but now there are four. My doctor said there is no sign of cancerous activity, but he suggested that I do another ultrasound next month just to be sure. And since my current plan is to be back in Seattle to continue on my graduate study this fall, my doctor suggested that I have ultrasound test every 3 months when I'm in the States.

Another reason why my doctor suggests frequent checkup is because of my lack of immune strength. Light fever came back to me after the last ultrasound test, and I'm on antibiotics again. I'm feeling better now, but I need to be pretty careful not to catch another cold.

I thought my last visit to the hospital will be the decision breaker, to be determined whether I will be back in the States in September or not. Well, there seems to be nothing I can really do to be absolutely sure that my lymphoma is deactivated, I'm planning on going to the States anyway.


Oh yes, and another injury story in my lab.

We had a BBQ after semi-annual research meeting few weeks ago at the university owned farm. We got good food, good drinks, and good people to hang out with. But when some people started getting high with some beers, they started to chase each other, and one guy managed to kick another guy's balls twice during the chase. In return, the guy with pain in his crotch made a Judo move to the kicker, the kicker fell down into a small ditch from his shoulder. The fell was critical. Since he was complaining about his shoulder pain, we took him to the nearest ER, which found out that he got his right collarbone into three pieces. He was hospitalized, had a surgery, and now he's on rehab.

What a lab. Too many broken bones in such a short period of time.

Women's soccer player, Sawa san!!! She was so cute!

"Don't hurt your own body" party

A solar cell I made ;)

I'm back in Nagano again to work on research for my master's thesis. For this post, I want to share an interesting, yet somewhat disturbing (to me) experience yesterday.

Last night, I went out with a group of students from the lab I work with for a dinner. It was to celebrate the birthday of one student, who also just got discharged from a hospital. This student, I will call him student A, busted his right hand by himself from punching really hard 2 weeks ago. Nobody really seemed to know the full detail of how or why he did it, but apparently he got really angry at himself after some meeting, went ahead to the building's exit door (which was made of steels), punched extremely hard once, which broke all fingers except the thumb. Students called 911 when they saw student A with a bloody injured hand, and he was sent to a hospital, which kept him for 11 days.

Since the hospital kept him for so long, I thought he may be psychologically unstable (and I mean, he broke his own hands from anger!?) but it seemed like he was just fine, and other students also seemed to not worry about that.

At the dinner party, after he brew the candles, he told his fellows, "don't hurt your own body" as he laughed. Everyone also laughed, except myself. I was simply, sad, to hear the student A say that as a joke, and that everyone also took it as a joke. I also realized that I am not the same as before. I don't get jokes that assume that your health is eternal, at least when you are young.

Perhaps because my life was threatened at one point, and I still live in the fear or recurrence. You may be young and healthy, but you are never young forever, and if your body and soul are healthy, enjoy and live at full while you can. I know it's not easy, but please remember to appreciate that what you have may be extraordinary to some others.

Tonsil infection

As a result of CT scan, my doctor informed me that my left tonsil has bacterial infection, which has been causing light fever for 2 weeks. I'm glad to know the cause of my mysterious fever finally, and nothing like a recurrence of cancer, but I wondered if my doctor could have figured it out without CT scan. I really don't want any more radiation, if possible.

Now I'm on antibiotics for a week, hopefully my fever will all go away by then.

Give me no more radiation...please!

Light fever and...refashion!

Last week, as I've posted on my blog, I felt like running so I ran for about 20 minutes. Then next day, I went out to play badminton with the co-workers at my old work place for 2 hours. These ladies are super energetic and don't know how to stop! Anyhow, I was exhausted when I got home after the badminton practice, then when the mysterious light fever started in that night.

The temperature started around 37.2 C...then it occasionally went up to 37.6 C as maximum, but my body temperature stayed around 37 C for days. I was supposed to go to Nagano again this Tuesday to conduct research, but I decided to postpone, and went to the hospital instead.

It also was not a very lucky day for me to visit the hospital. I waited for 1 hour for blood test (the nurse forgot to call me actually), another 2 hours to see the doctor, went back to the lab for additional blood test, but the nurse at the lab said I don't need to take additional one, so I went to cashier, then cashier told me that I still need to get additional blood test, so I had to go back to the lab again...etcetc, which took additional 1.5 hour or so. So when my mom and I got out of the hospital, our parking said we were at the hospital for 6 hours!! It was the same length of wait time as the opening day of the newest attraction at Tokyo Disney Sea, Toy Story Mania.

I also went to take CT scan again, just to make sure that the fever is not caused by the recurrence of cancerous cells. CT scan is also not fun, with all the contrast medium, having to skip meal, and additional radiation.

Next week I will go into the hospital again to hear the results from the CT scan.

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Although I was dizzy from my light fever, I had extra time in my hand. Then I came across really cool blog called Refashionista. Basically this creative lady turns donated clothes into wonderful new clothes and blogs about it. She was so cool and I was so inspired that I decided to try out some refashioning of clothes that I got from my mom and my mom's friends:

Comfortable fabric but awkward length...

Yay!!

My image was making something like this on the magazine :P

Occasionally I would trim the length of skirts or pants I buy, but I never went further than that. This time I went ahead and made a ribbon belt ;)

One year anniversary

On my passport, I have immigration stamp that shows entering Narita, Japan on July 9th, 2011. It's been exactly one year since I got back to Japan for cancer treatment! I feel that time passed by quite fast, faster than usual, especially since I have lost time during chemo treatment.

Remembering chemo
The other day I had to look through medical bills and prescription lists for some purposes. Well, honestly, I couldn't really 'look through', and I could only glance at it, because apparently my body still remembers the names of the enemies who gave great suffering few months ago. I was nauseated.

Ever since I acquired peace in mind and busy time for few months, I sometimes forget what I had gone through. But such reaction of my body tells me what I experienced was indeed significant. I need to remember how lucky I am to be here. When I think that way, nausea from Pavlovian effect doesn't seem that bad.


One year anniversary memorial run
I finally felt like running today. I used to run once a week or so before I found out about lymphoma, but I hadn't run at all since then. Since the weather was nice, I changed to running wear, put my sneakers on, and got out of the house.
I ran for about 2 km, which is short, but enough for my first run in past one year. What's more important is continuing the run. Studies show that frequent exercise reduces chances of falling to cancer. Since I know how wonderful it is to go through cancer treatment, recurrence of cancer is my nightmare. I'm going to run at least once a week, rest of my life.

Remission phase II !!

I fell in love with soba noodles since I moved to Nagano...so good!!

A few days ago I had an appointment with my doctor to hear about the results of ultrasound test I went through about 10 days ago. When I entered my doctor's office, he stared at me for a second with a surprise, and exclaimed, "Your hair grew!" Yes, my hair has grown, perhaps about 1 cm since i saw him last time. The back of my head that had lost hair from radiotherapy is also no longer bald, it's full of  new born hair like baby's hair. It's awesome and I'm interested in experiencing how hairs harden and become stiff overtime.

So the super good news is that I cleared the second evaluation! Yay! Well, the ultrasound did detect something (dead lymphoma I hope) on my left lower neck, but they can't really determine the activity or the content of 'something', so t will need to go back in August for comparison.

Additionally, I began to notice the amount of saliva I produce in my mouth has decreased. This must be from radiotherapy, which was expected and explained by my radiology doctor earlier. Having less saliva is not going to kill me, but now I have to be careful of cavity much more, and I also have to worry about bad breath (since saliva helps clean inside your mouth).

Almost time for the next evaluation!

Solar Eclipse
On May 21st at 7:30am, I went out of the hotel to watch solar eclipse. It was first in 125 years for people on Honshu island (the main island of Japan) to be able to observe such a rare solar eclipse.  Although I understood the significance, I totally forgot to buy the proper glasses to watch the eclipse. Luckily (or more like intentionally) I ran into a kind dentist next door, who lend me his glasses for me to watch solar eclipse. The solar eclipse was beautiful! I couldn't take a good picture of it, but I took a a picture of 木漏れ日（sunshine diffracted through the tree, which normally exhibits circular pattern of light) that the kind next door dentist taught me (shown above). I hope you understand how exciting it was to see the waxing and waning of the sunshine pattern!!

Almost time for...
Next week I have an appointment with the hospital for ultrasound examination. As far as I touch my lower left neck, where lymphoma used to occupy, it doesn't feel like it grew back. I have a mixed feeling, I certainly hope there's nothing going wrong, but I also subconsciously became prepared for the worst case scenario. The feeling is similar to taking an exam at school; I just want to get over with it and hear the result, so I know what to do next, regardless of the result.

The other day I saw a short documentary on a member of a Japanese rockband, who had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. I couldn't watch the part where he was being dosed with chemo drugs, it still reminded me of old bad times. When he was going through the side effects, he told his wife that he had severe chest pain in the night that he thought was going to die. Then, his wife couldn't go to sleep because she thought he could die any minute, she had to place her hand on his nose to check if he was breathing every hour or so. When I heard that story, it was a little odd to me, because even though I experienced severe chest pain, stomach ache, nausea, and everything else, I never thought of an idea that I was going to die. I guess it's good that I was being positive in a way, but I just didn't think I would die that easily. I think I was also trying not to even think about it, because it only make myself and others sad. Well, the story is a little bit different with the rockstar because he seems to have been in stage III when he was diagnosed, and he is much older, in his 40s. I guess when you're young, you are, and you should be much more hopeful for the future ahead, regardless of the life you live in.

Fortunately the chemotherapy was successful for the rockstar, he started rocking the world again once he entered the remission stage, just like me.

Training period for getting back to school

A small shrine on the way to my current work place

For the past three weeks, I have been working in the lab for about 8 hours a day, from 8:30 to 18:00 on average. "Isn't that too much?", as some expressed their concern about my physical ability to work as an average young person. I like to believe that I am physically back to what I used to be, but I also had to remind myself that I had not been working for the past 6+ months or so. The result was that I started to feel fatigue and slight nausea when I worked for about 8 hours, so I go back home quickly when my body sends me that sort of signal that "your body can't work anymore." Recently I'm starting to think of my time at Shinshu University as a training period before getting back to school. It's nice to know beforehand about what I can handle at current state.

Other than that, I've been enjoying my time in Nagano. Many cities in this prefecture have histories from back in the 16th century, so it has been very enjoyable to walk around in such historic towns. Also, hanging out and working with people from my age group has also been fun, since I haven't had much interaction with people in general for the past few months.

Matsumoto Castle

What I've been up to

There hasn't been new posts because I was traveling and I have been quite healthy. On the last post I mentioned that my WBC# was low, but when I took the blood test again few days later, my WBC# was 4600, the number I haven't seen in months!! Although I had a light fever and felt tired by the end of the day usually even then, it was really nice to know my body's recovery.

Plum flowers in Ueda, Nagano

What have I been up to?

So the day after I went to check my blood for the second time, I went back to Taiwan with my mom and my friend Mary for one week. It was really great that my grandparents and I got to see each other after all the treatments.  They were definitely more worried about me than I was worried about myself, so I hope I was able to bring some relief to their mind.

The day after I came back from Taiwan, I was in Tokyo for a concert and had lunch with my uncle from Dallas. I had great time with my uncle, cherry blossoms were blooming.

Asakusa, Tokyo

Then few days after my trip to Taiwan, I packed up one suitcase and moved to Ueda city, Nagano prefecture, which is about 200 km northwest of Tokyo. I will be here until beginning of June, to begin again the research from I left at UW. I really appreciate my professor, my department, and Kimura lab at Shinshu University for providing me such opportunity. I have been pretty busy, a lot to be done everyday, and I've been enjoying it so far. I've been working about 8 hours a day, but I haven't felt fatigue or sick. I think this experience will not only be valuable to my academic learning, but also to recover fully before I go back to the life I left in Seattle.

Remission phase I

Mt. Fuji...so beautiful!!

The good news is that there was no sign of malignant tumor regrowth (forgive me for the less use of proper vocabularies) after 2 months of radiotherapy treatment!! I was nervous to hear the result, and I'm glad it turned out to be a good news. My next check up is scheduled on June 1st, for a ultrasound test. Then another one in August 3rd.


PET scan
Last week I had PET scan at a prefecture-owned hospital that was about 40 minutes north of my home. This is because Tsukuba University Hospital doesn't own PET machine, which was surprising to me since Tsukuba University Hospital is the largest and the only university-owned hospital in my prefecture, Ibaraki. Anyhow, the PET scan went smoothly, and it wasn't very different from the experience at the UW, the only thing is that patients were to be rested in a public room with a divider rather than a private room.

I learned that my fear for injection still exists, when the nurse was injecting contrast medium to my body I had to close my eyes because it reminded me of chemotherapy. Then I felt noxious after the PET scan was done, although that could be a side effect from contrast medium rather than Pavlovian effect.

WBC count low
Yesterday when I had a blood test womehow my WBC# was only 2200, where on average human has 4000~6000 WBCs. Both my doctors from haematology and radiology were unsure of the cause, thus I will need to go back to the hospital next week to check up my blood again.

Interestingly enough, my haematology doctor guessed that the low WBC# may be caused by radiotherapy. He guessed that the radiation may have hit bone marrow that it led to less production of WBC#. On the other hand, my radiology doctor said that the effect from radiotherapy is unlikely and he thinks the WBC# was influenced by chemotherapy.

I don't think they are necessarily trying to blame on each other, but it showed the difficulties of determining causation for any symptoms. And when one is specialized in a field, perhaps one is likely to point a finger to other fields, which is understandable, but we need someone to put the pieces together to show the big picture. This applies in any field.

The hair story

Recently I saw a video clip on TV about a singer who went through a chemotherapy, where he took a picture of himself every single day to show the changes in his condition through appearance. It was cool to see how he lost his hair bit by bit, went to bald, then hair regrew bit by bit again. I didn't take as many pictures as he did, but I'm going to try something similar to it today.

September 2011

It looks like I still have a lot of hair here, but I remember starting to get annoyed by abnormally shedding. Hairs fell as I shake my head side to side. 

Radiotherapy took a lot of my hair away. It was interesting to see how it should look like when you compare my lower back head with that of my sister's.

1 week after radiotherapy started

My sister's head in comparison

December 2011, how I look normally at home

My hair looks like this now. It's just really thin. I thank my parents to have me born with thick and a lot of hair!

January 2012, how I look normally outside

Then wigging in...

I showed a picture of me in the 'newscaster style' wig to a couple of friends.It was interesting to hear people's opinion on this.

"You look like a Chinese actress!"
"The perfect hairstyle that cannot be achieved by natural hair."
"Looks like a spy, and it's fashionable."

I've never had a hairstyle like this, so it was kind of fun to play around with. But I made a very silly mistake by trying to straighten the artificial hair by hair iron, which burned a small part of the hair right before the wedding that I attended. Fortunately it wasn't very obvious!

And I have to say, that I don't enjoy wearing wig at all. I don't understand my aunt who loves it and wears it all the time. Wearing a wig always gave me headache because I don't like having anything tightening my head. However, miraculously, I did not have any trouble on my friend's wedding day...very strange. I had to wear the wig for 8 hours that day. My assumption is the constant consumption of alcohol that may have made my headache go away. So perhaps...alcohol should come with wig next time as well :P

February 2012, with a wig on

How much to whom

Last week I attended my best friend since we don't really know when's wedding. It was a beautiful, wonderful wedding! I also saw my classmates and friends from middle school, which was quite a nostalgic experience. All of them (except one friend who I told about my situation) asked me, "Did you just fly in from the United States for the wedding?" which I was planning on doing originally before I knew about lymphoma, but since that wasn't the case, I ended up saying, "I had some health concerns so I was actually in Japan for a little while. I'm hoping to go back to the States this summer, though." Then nobody questioned further about my 'health concerns', which was expected.

Additionally, I visited my old workplace few days ago. They were the people I wanted to see so badly, especially because I loved the people there and the place is physically so close from my home that I can see the building from my window. So thinking about visiting there gave me somewhat of strengths when I was suffering from side effects.

Nobody (again, except one close co-worker friend) knew that I was in Japan for the past few months, and I repeated the same sentence I gave out to the people at the wedding. However, I ended up telling the name of specific disease I have, and what happened in detail, to two ladies there. They both shared with me about the sickness they experienced first, so perhaps I felt comfortable to share because of that.

How much should you tell to whom?
The degree of comfort one feels about sharing personal information really depends on person, but when it comes to health concerns, it gave me headache that I don't know what to do.

Although Hodgkin's lymphoma is a relatively rare disease, I certainly hope that if anyone I meet ever come across similar sickness, or any disease at all, he/she finds out before it's too late. If I could increase the awareness about health in general through sharing my experience, I would be more than happy to share it all.
But before I was done with the treatments, I did not want sympathy or unnecessary anxiety from everyone I knew by telling them about lymphoma. It's because, again, the word "cancer" scares most people away. I never meant to draw a line in the pool of people I knew, to separate those to tell, and not to tell, but it happened subconsciously.

However, since I'm done with all the treatments, I can now be a living proof that I am well, that I feel more comfortable sharing further with everyone.

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Oh, and recently, I finally sorted out the medical bills from UW...the medical cost was astonishingly high compared to the ones in Japan, which reminded me of the hotel-like service at UW Medical Center, and the youth hostel-like service at Tsukuba University Hospital. I will discuss about it further in the next post.

Ability to feel 'bored'

Heart shaped pizza！

Ever since I began frequent visits to the hospital in June last year, I didn't have a single day that I felt 'bored.' (Although I never really felt bored when I was a student as well, since I was busy with school, research, and friends...) It is true that out of the past six months, I spent half of the time suffering from side effects, one fourth of the time visiting the hospital, then rest of the one fourth were spent in rush to do whatever I wanted before the next treatment begins. It has been about 2 weeks since the last visit to the hospital, and I was quite bored last week. Then I realized that the ability to feel 'bored' was something I have not experienced in awhile, because of all the treatment madness. So it seems like my body and mind is pretty much back to before June. I can feel 'bored', now!!

All my side effects seem to have disappeared as well. I have been enjoying eating tasteful dishes. The area affected by radiotherapy on my body were burned, but most of the burnt skins are peeled off. My doctor from radiology department said it will take about one year for all the burn to be gone. Also, new hair seems to have started growing on my head. I've heard from number of cancer patients that the new hair after chemo is really nice, like a baby hair almost. I'm looking forward to that :P

Followup #1...plans postponed

This morning I had a followup appointment with doctors from both departments, Hematology and Radiology. I had been feeling great except my tongue, who has still not regained healthy taste bud for me to taste saltiness. So I was actually excited to go to hospital, because I would get to discuss about my next step. I was waiting so long to start moving, I desperately wanted to start planing my time ahead.

But of course, things don't always turn out in the way you planned. I was hoping to head back to Seattle around June for the summer quarter, or at least I hoped to have such option. It turns out that I don't have that option. To be sure that no cancerous cells are growing back, I will need to go through at least two more follow up exams. I will be taking PET scan in mid March, then another followup appointment in August, which 6 months would be elapsed since the end of radiotherapy. If there was no sign of regrowth 6 months after the treatment, then there's 90 % chance that there really is no growing cancer cells. That's what my doctor said. I could do the follow up exams back at UW, but it will be a much easier choice if I just stayed few more months at home. "You will be able to go to the States with great relief if you could do the follow up here," my doctor said. I guess there's no need to hurry. Things I planned, can be postponed. It's never delayed.

The polar bear at the zoo looked really happy...he was walking around nonstop!

The word, 'cancer'

Winter sunset is my favorite view of the year.

Cancer. 癌。ガン。

The phonetic of the word (especially in Japanese) alone darkens one's feeling, but this word seems to bring much greater fear than it really should. The Chinese characters appears frightening, too. Why do they look and sound scary? Perhaps because there is no wonder drug for cancer (like any other sickness has perfect remedy). Or because its cause is uncertain (like the cause any other sickness is certain). Or because most people know someone who has fallen ill with cancer. Or perhaps because cancer is widely advertised?  

I think I understand the fear, but after going through the treatments for cure, I feel that the despair is somewhat overrated. The number one cause of death in the world is not even cancer (it's ischaemic heart disease). And there are many survivors. But maybe because the word, cancer, inevitably reminds much of the end of life. 

These discussions were going through my head as it has been difficult for me to determine who I should inform about my situation, and how much information I should give out. And I realized that I have a tendency to not use the word 'cancer' when I tell people, because of the reasons I've written earlier. I do hope to increase the awareness of the importance of periodic health examination for earlier detection of diseases, but not necessarily Hodgkin disease alone. There are million other diseases in the world, which makes it impossible for people to worry about every one of them. Nevertheless, letting others know about what I have been going through, should alarm others that living a healthy life is never normal, and they should pay attention to their own health.

Life is busy, and life may be short, depending on how you think about it. But I certainly felt my life being short when I was diagnosed with lymphoma. It's not healthy to worry too much about health, but it's always good to be up to date about your own body. Go take medical exam if you haven't in past few years, at least just for me!

Radiotherapy 4 + 5 ...unsalted life and burned skin, but it's done!!

I went to see a panda with Jiro a few days ago to Ueno zoo. She was not very friendly :P

Jiro was visiting me for the past two weeks, which had been very nice to have him around. The bad news is that sadly he left yesterday, but the good news is that I finished all my scheduled treatments yesterday!! My next appointment is in two weeks, where I will discuss with my doctor for evaluations and I'm hoping to know when I will be released.

Unsalted life
About three weeks ago I realized that nothings was tasting yummy. Everything I ate tasted bitter or tasteless. I first thought that either my mom messed up the food or restaurants weren't cooking well anymore. But I was the wrong one. The radiation also reached my tongue and parts of my tongue was burned (confirmed by my doctor), which made me taste food funny. The other day I ate a ramen noodle, which I didn't taste anything for the soup. Since the soup was soy sauce based, I concluded that the taste I'm lacking is the saltiness. Life without salt is very unpleasant, especially since I enjoy eating a lot. On the other hand, it has been quite interesting to find out how much salts are in every food. Now I'm using my tongue as a salt detector (not a very good one though, haha). My burned tongue is expected to be healed in about 1~2 weeks..I hope it'll be back sooner!

Burned skin
As for my other body condition, I had a light fever last week, but I also learned that the fever was caused by my burned skin. Because the radiation also passes my left armpit, my left armpit was suffering greatly from severe burns. There were few days that I couldn't lift my left arm. Currently most of my burned skins on my left armpit and both sides of my neck were peeled off, and I don't have any pain. I never had a sunburn in my life, so it reminds me once again, how intense the radiation is.

Radiotherapy week 3

A Happy New Year!
I wish the year of 2012 will bring hopes and joys to all of you.

The first radiotherapy appointment of the year of 2012 was on January 4th. I was feeling quite well over the short 'winter break' I had from the therapy, but as soon as the therapy resumed, throat sore, light fevers and light nausea also came back. I discussed my symptoms with my doctor, and he said they may be from radiotherapy, or they could simply be cold. I was also guessing that my symptoms may be from Pavlovian effect caused by the past chemotherapy madness, but I'm not sure.

Radiotherapy and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD)

I guess I still am an engineer. Despite the side effects, radiotherapy stimulates much more interests than chemotherapy. First of all, the radiotherapy machine is as overwhelming as CT scan machine, and it has a large arm that rotates to aim X-ray correctly to my body. The machine reminds me greatly of XRD machine. I feel like a test sample in XRD when I'm being exposed to X-ray.

During the treatment, I am fixed in place on a stage by a plastic cover unique to my face that fits perfectly (Left image). Again, it's like fixing a sample on the stage for XRD machine! It's nice to be excited about the treatment, although I'm sure it'll still be even nicer to be done.

"Wakame-Chan" Hair

I am exposed to X-ray radiation from both from front and back of my body. Currently the area exposed to radiation is quite large and it is schedule to minimize and pin down the area starting from mid next week. Because lower back of my head is also exposed to strong radiation, I felt burn-like pain and started shedding around that area like crazy last week. I no longer have the burning pain but now I have close to no hair on the lower back of my head. My sister said my hair could look like a cartoon character, Wakame-Chan (Right image) if I cut my hair shorter. I believe this is a rare opportunity to look just like her, but I declined my sister's suggestion.