Todd's Journey

One of the issues I have experienced on my cancer journey has not received a lot of attention on this blog, but with some upcoming optical appointments, I thought I give you an update on it.

Back in July of last year, much prior to starting cancer treatment, I suffered an optical nerve damage event due to inflammation of the nerve probably caused by the cancer. It caused the peripheral vision in my left eye to be impaired by a darker, cloudy area to the lower left of my eye.

The damage to the optical nerve is likely permanent, as optical nerve repair is not possible.

I have an upcoming optical appointment with an optical nerve damage specialist at the Ottawa Eye Institute. Not sure if they can do anything to repair it, or at least improve my vision from what it is today.

My vision issue is likely to be collateral damage from the cancer. And all part of the battle. It is what it is. I keep my fingers crossed that they can do anything to help my left eye vision.

Will keep you posted.

As you know, I ended up in Emergency over the weekend, feeling very weak, not eating, dehydrated, abdominal pain and not well overall. They thought I might be septic, so ran a bunch of tests on me, while giving me antibiotics just in case I had an infection.

The on-call Oncologist felt that the symptoms I had were more indicative of a reaction to the immunotherapy session. After some steroids I felt much better and was sent home.

While I was at the hospital they did a blood culture and urine culture to check for potential infections. Both results came back today showing I did have infections in both my blood and my urine. But the strain of infections were different. The infection in my blood is a more commonly known Staph infection that some of us naturally carry and is known to be a contaminate often in blood cultures. The urine infection is often related to a urinary tract infection, although I do not have many other symptoms of a UTI.

Nonetheless, the Doctors are now looking at what antibiotics they can put me on to fight these infections, and trying to determine if the infections are coincidence or a result of the immunotherapy (which can temporarily cause my immune system to ignore certain infections as it fights other diseases).

All in all I feel ok, and not sick at all. Will keep you posted as to what progress I make on the infection front.

For those of you who are asking me about how my bladder training is going, I am currently up to almost 2 and a half hours between urges to urinate.

I continue to try and allow more urine to sit in my bladder before going to the washroom so that my bladder will learn to expand a bit and understand it can hold more urine than it thinks.

The ends of the ureteral stents in my bladder do not seem to be irritating me as much, and there is now very little pain associated with urination.

So all in all, much improvement on that front. I will keep at the bladder training for a while still.

I have pretty much recovered from my immunotherapy reaction over the weekend. The small dose steroids I was given seemed to help a lot. I have my appetite back, am holding down my food, no fever, and no chills or rigors.

We'll have to see what, if anything, the Oncologist will do with my next immuno session. They may just add the small dose steroids to help prevent recurrence of the reaction.

Will keep you posted.

Well, it's been almost 6 months since Jamie and I have had to go to Emergency on a weekend (or day for that matter) but that streak came to a halt on Saturday. I appear to have been having another reaction to my immunotherapy session on Friday. All afternoon Friday, I was feeling cold, fatigued and had abdominal pain. I had no appetite, and was fairly nauseous.

This continued through the night. Saturday morning I woke up with more intense symptoms, plus I had a fever. We went to Emergency shortly after lunch where they put me on strong antibiotics as a precaution, and ran a whole slew of tests. Most of my bloodwork came back fairly normal, and they ruled out septis.

The ER doctors contacted Oncology at the Ottawa General Hospital who reviewed the symptoms and blood work and concluded that I was having a reaction to the last immunotherapy session.

He explained that the immunotherapy can mimik an infection, and even cause a fever. All of my symptoms were signs of an infection, so it was imperative of me to go into ER. Once they had determined it was a reaction, they gave me some steroids to take for a few days, which made me feel much better.

I am pretty much back to normal today, but our streak of staying out of ER on the weekends finally came to an end.

Hey everyone. I am still adjusting to the ureteral stents that are in place, causing the frequent urination issues. I still get fatigued but not as quickly as before. I have had some abdominal pain due to the stents and constipation caused by a few of my medications.

The immunotherapy session I had went well (other than the infusion reaction I got), so the oncologists were happy about that. The added aggravation that I live with now is feeling cold much more often, and brief bouts of shivering.

I have also been having some mental struggles the last few days. The feeling of guilt I have watching people (especially Jamie) have to do so much for me, and because I am still weak (from the chemo - can last up to six months) I cannot help him much. Things we used to do together, he has to now do himself. So I am feeling a real level of guilt.

The Doctors keep reminding me that I am still early in this Journey. I just finished a very successful chemo treatment, a month and a half ago. They infused me with a significant amount of chemo. The effects of the chemo (fatigue, weakness, etc) can carry on for up to six months following the end of chemo. Right now I am still dealing with the effects of the chemo.

They also reminded me that I just started immunotherapy that has it's own set of challenges. And that will take a while for me to get used to.

I know none of this is my fault, and I know that Jamie helps me because he loves me and is in this journey with me, but it doesn't erase the guilt I feel some days. It's been a tough few days.

I am sure it will pass. Like my Doctors say, it takes time.

Here is Chapter 16 of my cancer Jouney.

Had my first immunotherapy session today. Almost made it through the whole session, but unfortunately had a reaction with 8 minutes to go. I began shaking significantly for almost 20 minutes. They managed to get that under control by administering large doses of Benadryl, and a steroid. The shaking did subside and i did finish the remainder of my immunotherapy session with no further incident.

The ER doctor and Pharmacist at the Hospital said the the shaking can be expeccted when my immune system is in 'overdrive' from the therapy drug. They will give me the benadryl and steroid prior to the immuno drug next session in hopes to prevent the shaking from occurring again.

Unfortunately the Benadryl dosing and steroid made me very tired and weak again. I had to leave the hospital in a wheelchair, and when I got home, my legs collapsed just upon entering the house. Jamie helped support me to the floor and then we waiting there for about 5 minutes until I had enough strength in my legs to get and up make it to the couch. My strength returned in the afternoon.

As for the bladder update, I am still urinating very frequently but the time in between needing to urinate is slowly getting longer. The pain in urination is also getting better, with less stinging and burning now. I suspect things are getting better, but it sure is a slow process. The good news is I am peeing on my own, and my urine is quite clear.

That's the update for now. Take care everyone. Talk to you again soon, and I'll try and do a video blog update soon.