Opdivo Day

Every 4 weeks like clockwork, I return to UT Medical at 7:30 am to receive a 30 minute Opdivo Infusion to fight and/or control my Melanoma that had migrated from my foot to my groin to my neck where, when removed there, it was DEAD, so my radiation/opdivo treatment had worked...  Protocol for this disease/cancer now states that I will be receiving monthly infusions of this drug until my body decides it no longer likes receiving the toxic liquid.

While the actual infusion only lasts 30 minutes, one of the blood tests that must be conducted prior to my receiving the infusion, takes an hour, so I am usually there from 7:30 am until 9:30 am maybe 10 am depending upon how long I have to wait in between each set of circumstances.

Today, it is 9:30/10:00 am because I do not see the Oncologist but when I see the Oncologist that typically adds another hour to my time at the hospital.  However, I am always on the way back home before NOON...  so, I have my afternoons on these days completely free.

It is widely believed that my Melanoma tumors that invaded my body, came from some of the "wicked" chemo treatments that I had received for my non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when I had lived in Kentucky for a year and was seeing a new Oncologist...  who happened to believe that a more aggressive treatment against Lymphoma was appropriate based upon the literature that he had read.

I have no way of knowing if this Oncologist was right or wrong in his thinking...  all I know is about a couple years later, a Melanoma tumor was found on the bottom of my left foot that we originally thought was a wart and had it removed twice until the third time when the doctor decided to send it off for a investigation.