DONE!

Today I finished my 12th and last infusion of A (sometimes B) VD chemotherapy. Everything went very smoothly and was uneventful - just the way we like it! I did ride my bike to chemo - the myGarmin post of that ride is here if you're interested.

And, in keeping with my "stick it to the cancer man" attitude of late,  here is a picture of me getting my last infusion:

At the end of the infusion, the nurse took out my PICC line. Pablo did a great, great job - but I dumped him into the trash like the lame-ass, picc-bitch that he is! (Sorry, still feeling a bit of attitude about the whole morning). It was great to watch - they pull this small diameter (3-4 mm?), 12-15 inch line out of your arm - and it just keeps sliding out and you think - crazy! That thing was in the top part of my heart. No pain coming out and they just put a little pressure bandage on the wound. So for the first time in 24+ weeks I have no weird hardware in me. Bitchin!!!

Had a couple of good moments with the oncologist as well:

• I had given him a paper printout of my Edge 705 recorded workouts. Turns out he has a Garmin GPS trainer but only one of the 400 series. I enjoyed taunting him with my superior, 705 Edge technology. Definitely won that man-gear competition hands down!
• The doc gave me the green light for max physical exertion exercise. He felt that I couldn't do anything in a workout that would damage my pulmonary or cardiac function. So as my strength comes back I will add more intensity to my workouts. Yeah! (I know that some people wouldn't see this as a positive development so to each his own, I guess).
• After I manned him up about his dumb-ass Garmin GPS, he came back at me hard and noted that I had gained some weight (due to the prednisone) and that I had some dents in my quads (again from the prednisone taking away muscle mass). So he told me to lose the weight and ride my bike more to get my quads back. Talk about tough man-love! He was definitely pushing all my buttons and it was fun to get some taunting. I believe that when your care giver taunts you it's a sign that things are going pretty well in your treatment...
• We talked about how to heal yourself after chemo. Can you do anything to cleanse your body of the chemo, etc? Apparently the chemo doesn't stay in your body that long. By about day 5 of the cycle, over 95% of the drugs are out of your body. The recovery time is usually related to healing toxic effects of the chemo - nerve damage, depressed blood cell counts, etc. So his feedback was very reasonable but kind of boring. The way to get healthy after chemo is to - yup - live a healthy life. Eat good foods, exercise, get lots of sleep, stay hydrated. Just the standard stuff your mom might tell you to do. 

So this is basically all fantastic news and just what we wanted to hear. I am in Complete Remission (CR for short). I've got another few days of feeling mildly crappy from the last dose of chemo. But from this day forward I should be getting better and better. That's a pretty fantastic bit of news to get at this point in the journey.

So what am I feeling? Happy, relieved, impatient, thankful, scared, anxious. Pretty much doing the "spin the compass" set of emotions. I suspect it will take a couple of days to process the milestone and get my head around it. It's been a journey for sure and the last month has been particularly intense with the lung problems I've had and the hospital stay.

So that's it for now! This afternoon is the first afternoon of my journey to wellness post chemo. That feels pretty awesome. Knowing that I will just start feeling better and better over the next month is a great thing to look forward to.