Lymphoma Hat-trick. RIP Rowhan

Started chemo this morning. Fucking CHRIST I know how to have fun don't I?!

Bit of an improvement from last Thursday where I thought I'd been told nothing much was going to be possible. My consultant and I both assumed I was well in to stage 4a or 4b....

My PET scan on Wednesday from head to thigh came back with very clear results showing that there were "only" 3 tumours - 1 cluster on the left of my neck, one small one on the right and another very small one near the back. So, I'm not stage 4 but stage 2a, being one localised area with minimal spread.
Essentially it hasn't really metastasized but I had a CT scan yesterday afternoon for a black and white high def comparison and they're checking them over side by side today.

The good or bad thing about "it" being localised and much more manageable & easier is that they're insisting it's going to be chemo for 2 weeks followed shortly by 8 weeks of radiotherapy in 5 day groups and 2 day's recovery. The chemo has to work well for the radiotherapy to do the best job, then I have to manage to get through the radiation doses...

Once I've got through all of that I'll be getting a few weeks recovery, then as soon as I'm well enough again I'll be hopefully going on for a week of ULTRA high dose chemo again followed straight up with my 2nd stem cell transplant.

Assuming all of that goes to plan, I have to then get on to a very specific and highly experimental ground breaking new cancer vaccine trial which will push my (new) immune system to its limit while they train it to produce a very strong immune response to lymphoma cells...

It won't be easy to get on it, and it won't be easy to get to the stage where I'll be able to do it, but if I get through all of these stages there's a chance I'll never get this again.

To all the people who have managed to donate something to me, I've treated myself to a few things to help.
For the good days- new cycling mitts, bottles and a cap and potentially time to get some new padded shorts for pootling about.
For the bad days- a new PC game, a Netflix subscription, and some great noise cancelling headphones (only Sennheiser CX2.0G's but they're great for the money) to drown out the world and the ward.

Good thing, or again bad, about this initial treatment is it's just today and monday (different drug Monday though) then 2.5 weeks off. Plenty of time to rest, but plenty of time for the symptoms to escalate. Fear not though, I haz weed and a vaporizer. Thanks anonymous donor 😉 it should have any aches and pains, but it probably won't help with the long term change of taste and smell.

Never know, I might even get to enjoy a bit of summer at this rate but fucking hell it's looking like as much of a challenge as both previous times running in parallel.

3/4 of the initial chemo left
40 moderately high radio doses and the terrifying potential side-effects including permanent beard and tooth loss.
1 week of ULTRA high and a stem cell transplant from my sister....

Then who knows.
Got to get a near-perfect score on each of these bastard stages to have a decent long term hope.

One really important thing I've been told recently is that radio has an extremely high rate of successfully stopping ANY recurrence of cancer at the site it's treated. Just going to have to keep that at the front of my mind. Going to be one bitch of a ride