Life on Halaven

I have been on this chemo, Halaven, for a while now, but I haven't had very many full treatments and I didn't know if it was working. A full treatment means to receive both doses one week a part. So the first dose is on a Wednesday and the second dose is on the following Wednesday. The next week is a break and I don't get any chemo while I rest up and get ready for another round to kick my butt again. For one reason or another, many of the treatments have been interrupted and so the effectiveness of this particular chemo has not been determined and since I lost my hair for it, I would like it to be highly effective! Aside from loosing my hair, it has been one of the hardest treatments I have had. My legs are weak, numb and tingly. I am nauseated most days, I have headaches, and every tastes terrible. Except Reese's Puffs Cereal! I missed treatments because my blood tests would show I wasn't healthy enough, once I had to get a blood transfusion, that worked and I haven't needed another one since! Thanks again for all of the support and blood donations!! You guys are amazing! Other times I just didn't have a tumor marker test because the new doctor that came and went didn't believe in basing treatment on markers so much so that he rarely would test them. (I never let treatment stop or slow down with him, but he did over rule my requests to test the markers. Ironic since testing was the one thing many thought he did way too much of.) Anyway, I either didn't get enough consecutive treatments to test, or I wasn't getting a test to see if this chemo was effective. After talking with Dr. Hsu, he is substituting for himself :), we made it through enough treatments and then got the tests! I was pretty nervous but cried real tears of joy when I got the results! . My CA-15-3 went from 40.3 to 28.7, normal is 0-31.1. My CEA went from 9.5 to 3.4, normal is 0-4.6. You can see I went from off the charts to "normal". So I will continue to take this chemo until I am "normal" long enough for the doctors to determine I will stay there without the treatment. Until then I will happily be bald and feel like crap.