Recovery mail 2 : Walking & talking Rogier!
Friday, July 9 2004
Dear Friends around the globe,
Thank you all again for the great support which followed my last email. To illustrate this : I received cards from the Netherlands (duh), the US, Korea, Australia, Sweden, Spain, Germany, France and Canada. I am very impressed! I am still lagging behind with my responses, but I’ll try to catch up in the following week.
In this email I’ll try to give a shorter 
update on my situation. The ultra-short version is that I’m doing very very well so far.
Short recap of treatment.
I’ll get 6-8 months of chemotherapy, followed by 1 month of radiation treatment. The chemotherapy consists of going to the hospital once every two weeks to get cytostatica in a polyclinical fashion (I get in in the morning, they kick me out in the afternoon). I’ve received my second dose of chemotherapy last Friday.
Recovery following the first dose of chemotherapy.
As I mentioned in my last email, I endured the first dose of chemotherapy quite well. Do you know the cat Garfield? I really felt like him in the first week following chemotherapy, hanging lazy on the couch all day being fed all kinds of fruit and healthy drinks. I was really spoiled. When I asked my mother for some yoghurt-drink, she bought five different flavors – so I could choose. That made it easy to cope with that situation. The worst thing were the headaches which I developed when sitting upright or when walking around. In retrospect, these were probably reminiscent of the punction of ‘brain liquid’ at the LUMC of which it is known that you can develop headaches which can last for up to one week. From the fifth day onwards after receiving chemotherapy, the headaches disappeared almost completely and I was able to walk, bicycle (welcome back in the Netherlands!) or drive a car. I was very happy to be “mobile” again. The whole of the second week I felt quite okay It was very nice to meet a lot of Dutch friends. They were often surprised to find me walking, talking and smiling.
Recovery following the second dose of chemotherapy.
At a check at the LUMC I was told that my second chemotherapy would probably be worse than the first, for I was given high doses of the drug Prednisone at that time which strongly inhibits nausea (misselijkheid). After my first chemotherapy I was taken off this drug and at present I’m taking no drugs at all. The second chemotherapy would be quite representative to how I would feel after treatments in the coming months.
I’m pleased to say that I endured the second chemo surprisingly well. I received the chemotherapy last Friday and already on Saturday I took the bike to cycle to the city and see some friends. I doubt whether I would be able to do a lot of serious stuff like studying or working, but I’ll leave that for later.
The side effect which bothers me most is that one of the cytostatica affects my heart-rhythm. Sometimes when in rest my heart-rate can be pretty high or sometimes my heart-rate can be slightly irregular. I find it quite annoying to not be 100% confident about my heart. At least it’s not broken 
.
Whether I’ll respond so well to every dose of chemotherapy remains to be seen, but at least I passed another one.
Future.
I’ll await my recovery from the third dose of chemotherapy before I’ll try to make serious plans for my activities during the next months.
Smalltalk : did you know that
- I still have my hair? With the A.B.V.D.-chemotherapy normally patients lose their hair after 1-2 weeks, but, but my curly hairs are very stubborn!
- my doctor told me that it would be a good thing for me to gain some weight!? Now, who gets to hear that from their doctor nowadays?
- my chances of becoming fertile again after I finish chemotherapy have increased to 50%? Doctors could make a better analysis of the chance now I have a diagnosis. But enough talk about chances, only my result counts…
- some ten flights have been cancelled because of my illness? Sanne had to cancel four flights, Clemens had to cancel two flights and I had to cancel five flights myself. Definitely no fun, but hopefully the planned holidays to the west-coast of the United States and to Cuba will only be postponed.
- I miss my friends at Princeton a lot?
- my room at the Herengracht will again be available to me from tomorrow onwards? I can sleep, eat and live either at my parents place [if I want to be spoiled] or at my “studentenhuis” in the city [you know why ].
- a lot of side-effects tend to manifest themselves early on in the treatment of chemotherapy, like problems in your mouth (blisters and wounds; very nasty)? These blisters tend to make patients eat even less, but fortunately I don’t have any problem like that. And I eat like crazy .
- the Dutch weather is just disgusting?
Please do keep me informed on things are in your local environment. As I said, I’ll try to catch up with responding to emails.
Wow… the mail actually IS shorter .
Best wishes,
Rogier