Out Damned Spot!

Okay I just have to ask – who came up with this concept?  I feel perfectly fine but I have a lump so they are going to make me really sick, and then I will be better because the lump will die.  Doesn’t that just seem a little ass backwards?  Fine, whatever. I want the bastard gone so I will do it. 

Oddly I wasn’t all that nervous about the first day of chemotherapy.    First of all –I really could feel people thinking of me and praying for me that day.  It meant a lot.  I also felt well-informed about what would happen (unlike the Herbert incident).  Most of all, I was glad to actually be doing something about this evil tumor in me.  So officially the battle began on Friday, October 15.  Take that damned spot!!

To be honest though: Chemo is pretty boring – other than seeing whatever friend takes me.

The routine is this – the person who takes me – in the case of this round Johnnie (thanks Johnnie!) has to take me to McDonald’s first for a good breakfast (good as defined by me!)  Then they drop me off at Virginia Cancer Specialists.  (if you are on this duty – you can only come in for it IF you are healthy  and won’t give others germs and IF they have room for visitors but usually they don’t – so better to just plan to run your errands or work a bit in the morning)  I go back to the treatment rooms and grab a Lay Z Boy chair and they plug me into an IV, starting with an anti-nausea med, then the three drugs they are giving me (TCH is what we call the treatment).  This takes 3-4 hours depending on the dose I am getting.  When I done, I call to get a ride home from my designated person and if they have time we can stop for lunch too.  Then I just take a nap and putz around the house until the treatment really kicks in. 

On the day after the treatment, someone (in this case Laurie- thank you!) takes me to get my neulasta shot that helps my blood cells reproduce.  That can be a pain because when it is on Saturday it is way out in Fairfax,  but it actually only takes 15 minutes and then we are on our way – and have lunch after for fun. 

I don’t really start feeling yucky until Sunday morning.  I have some drugs to help with that but Sunday and Monday are the hardest and the yucky feeling – mostly acid reflux and bone ache – keep me from resting well.  Those feelings came and went for a lot of the first week but after that I started feeling better progressively through the span of the treatment cycle.  The only thing that remains is fatigue.  I just get tired pretty easily but I don’t feel awful all the time. 

Just about the time I feel a lot better – they will do another treatment to make me feel like crap again – see what I mean about the flaws in this model?  But now I only have five more chemo cycles left.  Woohoo!