Chemotherapy or... DIE!

I went to talk to my bishop to get counsel. I told him that I was trying alternative approaches for my cancer treatment. I told my Bishop that I would rather die than undergo chemotherapy, surgery and/or radiation treatments. They are destructive and painful. They require a lot of courage to face and they only treat the cancer with little hope of a cure. He asked if it was because of the cost? No, it wasn't the cost. I explained it was more of a principle. In the long term, I wanted to avoid damaging my body as much as possible. Treatment may help you stay alive but it creates a lot of problems too.

I changed my mind and submitted to chemotherapy when the pain and swelling from the tumor got too bad. The tumor enlarged to the point that I couldn't eat more than 2 teaspoons of food at a time and I was starting to have trouble breathing. I had a port installed and started Chemotherapy at Central Utah Clinic July 2013.

 It took 5 hours, 5 days a week with a week in between to recover. Each day, the nurses  inserted a large needle into the port in my chest above the left breast. The nurse would start each session with a large bag that contained saline solution that took about 20 minutes to finish dripping. I would then have to use the restroom about 3-5 times during the session to help protect the kidneys. This was followed by a smaller bag that contained anti-nausea medicine and up to three chemo drugs: etoposide, cisplatin  and a shot that I got once a week, bleomycin, that was administered with a syringe and cost $3,000! On the "recovery" week I received a bleomycin shot. I remember watching all of the air bubbles in the tubes afraid at first that this was dangerous. Sometimes the nurse would bleed off the air and reassured me that I wasn't at any real risk.

Before the chemo started, I was taking ibuprofen and Tylenol in large doses around the clock. After the first chemotherapy treatment, I felt significant pain relief and after the first week stopped taking pain meds. I didn't notice any side effects the first week apart from fatigue. I think the tumor sucked up most of the medicine since it was growing so fast.