In celebration of Breast Cancer Awareness Month I decided to turn my right quadriceps hot pink for a couple of days....
Friday was the next to last round of shots for the PRESENT trial. My 2.5 year shots. 2.5 years. Holy Crap! that's some pretty good progress.
Blood, Sweat and Urine
The appointment started out in the usual way. Blood work. This time they only required 4 tubes. Only four. Even more progress. The nice tech drawing blood got it flowing with a single stick. Things were going swimmingly. I give my usual urine sample and wait for the result to come back.
The test results come back and for the first time in a long time I do not have perfect labs. My oncologist lets me know that I am anemic. Hmmm, perhaps eating a mostly vegetarian diet and meat only twice a week did have some repercussions.
She asks me how my energy level is, I tell her that I am less tired than I was in July and that I think running in the morning helped. We talked about reflector vests and head lamps. She was totally going to try a head lamp for her morning runs.
After a physical exam, where she continues to monitor the spot in the scar that annoys her and hasn't changed in the past 6 months, I'm cleared to get my shots.
The research RN and I go into the infusion room where she has booked a chair for the shots and we wait for the new research pharmacist to bring the shots up. And then we wait some more.
And then she shows up to let me know that they screwed up in the compounding of injections and they had to throw out one of the four shots. She said they could re do them if I wanted or I could just get the three and file a breech in protocol.
I looked at the research pharmacist in disbelief. These are cancer vaccine shots. Why would I want to violate protocol? I already caused a side effect. I asked the research pharmacist to re do the shots. She agreed.
The research RN knew I must be hungry because we were now an hour past when my appoint was supposed to be over. She brought me cookies and water to tide me over.
And then we waited and waited and they finally brought up four syringes. And they forgot the needles. Um...did study protocol change? Should I inject them into my mouth now?
The intradermal needles are finally located. The research RN could not apologize more. And then she started injecting me and she was apologizing more. Friday the injections were like long slow bee stings. And my leg started to swell and puff pretty quickly after (as it usually does).
The return of Super Quad
That night and most of the next day I looked like I had a quad implant on my right thigh. I found spandex to the most comfortable pants for the day, but they very much accentuated the difference between the two legs. I may or may not have obsessively compared my two thighs through out the day.
By Sunday the super quad was down to a slightly inflamed quad and was less pink. By Monday all the swelling was gone and the four injection sights are just itchy and discolored. And that's the way it remains today.
Being a test subject in a clinical trial to help prevent the recurrence of breast cancer, now that's one way to celebrate the Boob-tober.
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