First the bad news - in my stupidity, and feeling a bit better, I tried going out to drive my lawn tractor with the snow blower on it on Tuesday to clear the snow from the lane. I didn't really think much about it being too labour intensive, but apparently just the lifting of my blower, and the pushing of the pedals, and maybe the position I sat in for an hour, was enough to pull one of abdominal muscles.
I have to try and remember that my muscles have not been actively used for almost 7 months now, so the easiest of tasks may be a bit of a strain for them. Anyhow, I will just have to rest more and let the abdominal muscle heal up again.
As for my next steps in my cancer treatment, I will begin immunotherapy the first week of January. Bladder cancer cells have a specific protein marker on them that hides the fact they are cancer cells. This marker fools my own immune system into thinking the cancer cells are normal cells. What the immunotherapy will do is remove that specific protein marker on the cancer cells allowing my immune system to hopefully start attacking those cells, therefore keeping the cancer at bay (stop it from growing or spreading). Immunotherapy, if successful, can continue to work for a very long time.
The immunotherapy will be administered by intraveneous drip every two weeks for as long as the immunotherapy keeps working. After several years, if the immunotherapy is still working, they may take me off of it, and simply follow up with scans every so often.
The immunotherapy is likely to cause me fatigue again, but not nearly as significant as the chemotherapy did. It is not expected to make me nauseaus or sick to my stomach.
I will have to have CT scans done every three months now to ensure the cancer isn't returning or growing again.
If, for some reason, the immunotherapy does not work out, or I don't tolerate the immunotherapy drug very well, there are other medication options they can try.
It definetly is no fun knowing I have to go every two weeks for treatment for a long time to come, but I need to do it to keep my cancer under control, and to allow me to live a nice, as close to normal, life again.
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