Other Blogs and Update

There are a lot of melanoma related blogs that I read, and since I still don't know how to make a blog roll thing on the side of my blog, I thought I'd share and link to some of them in a post.

Attitude of Gratitude - this blog is written by a wonderful woman who is a Methodist pastor, and is the same stage melanoma as I am - 3b. I dare you to read her blog and not be blessed by something she says, whether you are affected by melanoma or not. She is an inspiration to me and I bet she will be for you too!

Adventures With My Enemy Melanoma - this girl is a big part of the reason I started blogging about my experiences, and decided to share with my Facebook world what I was going through. I felt like it needed to be private, but when I started reading her blog, I realized it was my responsibility to bring melanoma awareness to my little world. 

Welcome to The Hotel Melanoma - first of all, I love this guy because he's a stage 3c survivor of about 9 years now, so that gives me great hope. Secondly, at the end of every blog post, he takes a song and changes the lyrics to be melanoma related, and I think that's pretty funny. 

There are several more blogs that I keep up with, but those are my favorites, and one day I will figure out how to link to all of them from this blog! 

If you want to learn more facts about melanoma, here are 2 great websites:

Melanoma Research Foundation

Melanoma International Foundation

Update!

I may have already mentioned this, but I finished radiation almost 5 weeks ago. I've STILL got skin discoloration on part of my back, and I had a bad itchy rash for a few weeks but that has finally gotten a lot better and has almost healed completely. Really soon I'll be able to use self tanner again, I am very pasty white right now! And I know that's ok, but I'll be happy to have a little color back - I wear shorts at the gym and I'm worried I might blind someone :)

I also started the clinical trial last week. On Tuesday 10/30, I had my first infusion of ipilimumab, or ipi, or Yervoy. Everything went very well, the nurse blew out my vein when she tried to start the IV, but it was no big deal at all, and the 2nd try went just fine, and I didn't even have any bruises. Everyone was very nice, and I had a good time just hanging out with my parents for a few hours.

A little education on the drug I am getting - a lot of people call it "chemo", and I do get the drugs in the chemo suite at Mayo, but it's really kind of the opposite of traditional chemo. From what I understand, with my limited knowledge of medicine, traditional chemo basically kills everything, good and bad, and that's why patients get so sick, lose their hair, etc. Well, chemo doesn't work for melanoma, so the drugs I am getting try to boost my immune system so that I can fight off any cancer cells that might be lurking in there. I really like the idea of that, although I don't like that melanoma is so different from other cancers, and not as easily understood. And right now, the only way to get the ipi at my stage is to participate in the clinical trial and hope you get randomized into the right category. If you have stage 3 melanoma that is inoperable or stage 4 (melanoma has spread to organs), ipi is approved by the insurance companies, but I hope that very soon it's approved for earlier stages, and I think it's really cool that I can be part of that. I am also extremely thankful that I didn't get my first choice in the clinical trial - I wanted the high dose ipi, because I figured the more, the better, but my oncologist told me that he is not comfortable with the high dose, and has only had 1 patient get it, and he had to take them off of it because the side effects were too bad. And since it's a trial, once that patient was taken off the ipi, he was off, they couldn't just lower the dosage. Just another reminder that sometimes we don't see the whole picture, and our plans aren't always the best, and I believe that God was in control there. 

So anyway, I got the ipi on Tuesday, and for the next few days I felt a little extra tired, but that was it. The 2nd treatment is in 2 weeks, and the side effects might get worse, but hopefully nothing major. The good news is, I have treatment in November, December, January, then no more for 12 weeks after that! It's been great to be able to get back to a normal schedule, with all those doctor appointments, I was missing a lot of work and not in the gym as much as I'd like to be, and really, just constantly stressed out about what was going to happen with the clinical trial. So now, I'm getting back to doing personal training a little more, and working on gaining back the strength I'd lost after surgery, and I can definitely tell that I'm not as stressed out now! Well this is all I've got for now, hopefully I'll have more positive updates soon!