Long Day

Chemo treatment #5 is complete. 3 more to go!

It was a long, exhausting day. I was at the dr office for 7.5 hours. There was a bit of drama or maybe I should call it excitement. Yesterday I had a fever.....only 100.5, but for chemo patients that is the threshold to call your dr and decide on next steps. So I did. Since I was out of my period of low white blood cells (nadir period), my dr was not concerned. I took tylenol and the fever dropped to 99 and the chills subsided. By morning my temp was still 99. So, not only was I filled with dread for this treatment day, but now I was uncertain if it would even happen. Anxiety was starting to take hold because I was fearful of the side-effects of Taxol. I knew what to expect with AC, but Taxol is nasty in different ways. However, at the same time I'm feeling dreadful, I still did not want to delay treatment despite how yucky I was feeling. You can imagine all these emotions welling up inside.

I arrived at my 9am appt not knowing what to expect. Four things concerned me: MUGA scan results, blood count results, fever & I felt lousy. Any of these could delay treatment. The dr had good news to share. My MUGA scan result were unchanged from my baseline in April. This means my heart is handling the toxic drugs well. My blood counts looked fabulous. I still had a fever & felt horrible, but this didn't concern her too much. She said that clinically there is no solid reason to delay treatment. However, it would be reasonable to delay until I felt better physically and emotionally. My dr gave a me a choice....go or no go. I decided to go. I just wanted to get past it. Plus, logistically it was the easiest thing to do.......the kids were being cared for, Mark could be with me until noon and we had everything lined up.

Once my port was accessed with the IV line, the nurse started saline & pre-meds. This is when I threw up into the trash can by my side. It was nasty. I've never thrown up while on chemo. It clearly wasn't the chemo drugs, so I'm guessing it was nerves or a viral bug that was causing the fever. This was not how I wanted to start the treatment. The nurses gave me a push of benydryl through my IV & started the anti-nausea meds. This made me very sleepy. I drifted in and out of sleep for the next few hours. I was well cared for by the nurses. The staff is so awesome.

By 2pm I was feeling more alert and counting down the time until I would be done. I had an appetite and requested rice & toast from the hospital cafe. It wasn't bad....plain was all I wanted.

I'm feeling pretty good tonight. Not as tired as I was with AC. I need to watch my fever carefully for the next week and keep a close eye on my hands & feet for neuropathy (nerve damage). This could potentially be very painful and temporarily limit the use of my finger. I'm hoping for the best.

I'm half way through Lance Armstrong's book, It's Not About the Bike. His mother always told him to "Make an obstacle an opportunity." I was up against a big obstacle today, but it was an opportunity for me to dig deep to my inner strength and my faith in God to see me through. My will was strong today. I persevered.

Thank you to everyone who helped us today. We appreciate you so much. Praise God for giving me the strength & hope to endure a dreadful day and come out of it a stronger, faithful being.
Love to you all! We are so grateful. Love, srb