Starting Chemo - and update on what is happening

ozchrissy

Hello again everyone, I haven't been back for a while, there were lots of complications that came to light during my workup for the surgery. I have had cardiomyopathy for 13 years and a biventricular pacer/ICD for 6 years. To cut a long story short, my device decided to run out of battery, an angiogram showed up a 90% blockage in my coronary artery and I also developed cellulitus. All these extra issues have taken my mind of my cancer and focused on getting them fixed. The most difficult was the cellulitis as it had to clear before they could do anything. I have been hospitalized for the past 2 weeks with all this stuff but I have now had all the procedures and am ok now to undergo the cancer therapy at last. I have a good medical team, and I should be starting chemo next week. I can't have the surgery for another 2 months due to the stent, it has to settle into my artery and that also requires the use of blood thinners, so they are going with chemo first.

My cancer is at the oesophagogastric junction: Invasive moderately to poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma of the gastric cardia. The PET scan came back that it is isolated, no other cancer showed up. It also seems to be small, and I am pretty sure that it has only been there since the new year. I had a lot of blood tests in January, all looking for infection markers and other bio markers, so I would feel that something would have shown up on those tests.

I would love to hear from anyone who has had chemo for this cancer and what drugs did they use and what were the side effects. I am completely ignorant of any of the chemo procedures so any advice and advanced warning that you can give me would be gratefully accepted. I see the surgeon on Monday and then on to the oncologist. My main questions is are the drugs the ugly ones that make you very sick and will I loose my hair. Are you admitted for the procedures. Really anything you can tell me about the chemo experience will be gratefully accepted. I am very confident that I am going to survive this, as it is Stage 1 and I really am determined this is only going to be a temporary setback. I know it is going to be hard, but I am going to come out the other side.

Thanks for all your earlier responses to me, I now can concentrate on my cancer, so will be focusing all my energies toward that process from now on.

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