Chemotherapy, or chemo for short, is my first big step towards a cure. It is also used for tumor control or palliative purposes. By way reminder, my treatment regime is called perioperative care: chemo-stomach surgery-chemo. It is the most accepted treatment regime for gastric cancer; but that said, no standard of care exists for the treatment of gastric cancer. This is the “best” current approach – and by “best”, I mean it nominally elicits the better results than other care regimes.

But what is chemo exactly? Chemo is the use of any drug to treat any disease, but it is most closely associated with the treatment of cancer. In reality, chemo is the process of introducing poison – masquerading as medicine – into my body to halt the cancer’s growth and prevent metastasis (spreading to other parts of my body). The poison does not discriminate between health cells and cancer cells. This results in a number of side effects including nausea, diarrhea, constipation, hair loss (most susceptible healthy cells to chemo), loss of appetite, fatigue, susceptibility to infections (due to attacks on white blood cells), bleeding (due to attacking red blood cells), mouth sores, and neuropathy. Simple, right?

Not so fast. Each cancer responds to different drugs differently, duh! Oncologists select from ten (currently) separate chemo drugs for gastric cancer. One or more chemo drugs are used based on a number of factors (e.g. age, stage, physical fitness) and generally accepted medical practices.

Winner, winner! Chicken dinner! I hit the demographic and cancer jackpot for a 4 toxin medicinal concoction know as FLOT: Fluorouracil (5FU), Leucovorin (folic acid), Oxaliplatin (Eloxatin), and Docetaxel (Taxotere). But wait, I wrote FLOT and the first letters of all the drugs make FLOD…or if you rearrange them FOLD (not a good letter/tile set for Words with Friends or Scrabble) and no, DOLF is not a real word. Unexplicably, FLOT uses the name brand of docetaxel known at Taxotere; weird considering the other chemo drugs also have name brand alter egos.

On a positive note, I am subject to all the previously explained side effects and more…yeah me! #ChemoCrusader!

Infusion of the chemo drugs into my system occurs every 14 days for 4 cycles at the John P. Murtha Cancer Center at Walter Reed’s National Military Medical Center. Instead of getting an IV each time, I had a port placed. It makes access much easier.

Today: phase 1, day 1, cycle 1. So far, I am battling the verge of mild nausea, tingling lips, tight throat, and ninja chops to the mandibles (when I eat something, especially something crunchy…ouch). The nadir, or lowest point of blood cell counts, happens between days 5-9, with many of the other side effects can happen within hours after. Many of the other side affects begin to taper around days 11-14. But what about the chemo’s affect on my most enviable physical feature?

My hair, oh my hair! My soon-to-be-lost lushes locks! That’s right, I’ll most likely lose most, if not all, my hair. #BaldIsSexy

Luckily, that means its only a few weeks before I transform into Captain Picard – we both exude a profound personal charisma, intelligence, and adaptability which expands our fame throughout the known universe and often leads to our being entrusted with great responsibility accordingly. Ok, that explains Picard, not me. But, when I lose my hair, I think a quick silver Sharpie crown will give me instant credibility and foxy stile.

On another positive note, just about the time my hair starts to grow back, I’ll start my phase 2 post-op chemo regime – the same FLOT protocol.

The goal of my chemo is to shrink the tumor and kill any unobserved cancerous cells. In the end, this treatment protocol is a critical element towards my path to a cure. Bring it on!