The plan

The plan, as laid out by my oncologist, was to have two five-week cycles of chemotherapy, then surgery (essentially a knee replacement, although the surgeon will remove somewhat more bone than is standard in a knee replacement), then another four chemotherapy cycles. The chemotherapy cycle would be three days of outpatient doxorubicin and cisplatin (the gold standards for sick-making chemotherapy drugs) then two weeks to recover, then two weeks in the hospital to get high-dose methotrexate. The methotrexate, supposedly, does not have much in the way of side effects.

The chemotherapy ruins my immune system and makes me vulnerable to secondary infections, especially the horrible humiliating ones that normally only trouble the elderly. The worst one I've had is called c. difficile, an intestinal infection that is very contagious in hospitals. It's painful and humiliating. I had it once in the first cycle, which caused the hospital to cancel my second week of methotrexate, and the day before I was supposed to check into the hospital during the second cycle I was diagnosed with it again.

Because of that, my whole schedule is in jeopardy. The Salty Nurse tells me that they may not be able to do the surgery until I've had the two weeks of methotrexate, and that I absolutely can't have the methotrexate until I've had ten days of antibiotics. There's only one surgeon in the state of Arizona who performs limb sparing surgery on patients with osteogenic sarcoma; it took a month to get a consultation with him. If we have to reschedule, how long will it take to get on his schedule again? Walking around with crutches (and the constant fear of standing up one day and breaking my femur) is driving me crazy, and I just want someone to cut the damn cancer out of me already.

I should have an answer about the surgery on Monday sometime, which is when I'm supposed to have an MRI in preparation for the surgery. MRIs are horrible; if I don't have to have one so soon, it would certainly be a silver lining.