Yea today is Round 2 Cycle 4 Day 1.  These numbers are becoming less of a focus for me.   With the eye on the ball, we are keeping our stride.  Cheerleaders on the sidelines are reminding me we are 1/3 the way through this portion, and that is WONDERFUL to hear!  (thank you for carrying that part so I don’t feel the need to) The infusion (or invasion as  brother M calls it) went fine.  We have a regular nurse who is just wonderful.  Actually they all are, but K is our nurse and is just the right match for us.

Technical information about today: the waiting room was PACKED early this am when I galloped in.  I get comments on my boots at least once each visit.  I usually go to the lab first to access the port and do the blood draw for the labs that have to be read before infusions begin.  Today K came and took me back to my chair (another chair with a beautiful view of the fields and gardens behind the center – not all the chairs have views) and accessed the port and did the draws right there.  All is well in my blood.  As you may recall from previous entries, sometimes there is good blood return when the port is accessed (this is crucial to see that the port is working properly), and sometimes there is blood return but not enough for the labs.  You may recall that sometimes we have to do creative positioning.  Today we did that.  If anyone who ever gets a port reads this, please have faith.  Skilled nurses who know about ports know it’s about positioning much of the time.   You will come to have confidence in knowing your port well.  We reclined the chair and I put my hand behind my head this time.  It worked like a charm.  The benadryl and zofran were the first drips after the labs came back.  Then the Taxol.  4 hours later I was on my feet.

A long side note:  4 hours at the center is not a long time.  My particular regime is to get labs drawn which takes about 15 minutes if we succeed accessing the port quickly.  I get a nursing assessment (weight, vitals, symptom check, medication check) and then we wait for the lab results which usually takes 15 to 30 minutes.  (I’m in the chair by this point).  Then they start the hydrating drip, and the benadryl (a very small bag) and then a flush and the antinausea med (another small bag).  Then 1/2 hour wait.  THEN the Taxol (1 hour).  Once that’s all done the port gets flushed so it does not get clots and I’m outta there.  There was a man next to me who started when I did and was on basically the same schedule, however after I was leaving he was starting a 3 hour drip and had another med after that one.  There are so many cancers and chemo regimes.  I am grateful, in a funny way, to have the cancer with relatively short treatment episodes.

The chemo room is completely open with curtains for semi-privacy when needed or requested.  Conversations are fairly open.  I am struck by how many people just starting out ask which of the 3-4 antinausea meds that they have been prescribed to start with.  It seems that everyone gets told to just try them out.  When I started out, I heard “stay ahead of the nausea” and asked “how do you know if you are even experiencing nausea if you are taking meds before you feel it?”  “how do you know which one will work?”  I heard “when you feel nauseous just take one and see if it helps…if it doesn’t help, try another.”  and asked “how do I stay ahead of it if I am waiting to feel it and it comes on strong?”  If I were going to give advice at this point, it would be to think about what feels right to you.  I went with something else as my first line of defense.  (acupuncture and herbs and careful eating)  This is because I hate taking medications.  I will avoid it whenever I can.  B had me take the whole arsenal on the first day with AC (after I was completely empty from diarrhea and was just moaning with nausea) he couldn’t stand it any more.  I eased back a lot and chose not to do any steroids.  I also decided on the one drug I thought seemed to be the least harmful to me. I can be really stubborn in spite of myself, but this is what I chose.   Remember when I asked what would you rather be nauseous or constipated?  It’s a serious thing to consider.   I have not felt nauseous during this phase of treatment so far.

I could not do any blogging during the infusion because of technical difficulties…alas.  SO I worked on knitting a great colorful flap hat and did some other stuff instead.  My drawing is not quite finished, so if you want to see the 4th panel of that drawing you might want to check back some time in the next day or two.

SO this is not what I want to spend time on.  I feel I have to share an “if you blink you might miss something like this” story.

I left the center and had a couple errands to do.  You know, bank, book store, gas up the car.  I was about to exit the gas station and on my second look to the left a very small, older woman was trying to catch my eye.  I opened my window (mind you, I had my glasses and a crazy hat pulled down over my ears) and here’s what transpired:

“Could you give me a ride to town?  If you drop me off at W….  street I can walk the rest of the way.”

My immediate thought and comment was “Absolutely” and I made room for her in the front seat.  My second thought as we were driving was “what reason would a person not do this?”  I came up with a bunch of reasons and let them go as my passenger told me about some important things in her 77 years.

“You know I left my house this morning to do these important errands and when I got to the gas station (about a mile from her home) I stuck out my thumb and this really nice man picked me up in his truck and you know what?  He took me right to the DOOR of the place I needed to go.”

She told me of her 26 year marriage and the death of her husband 10 years ago.  She showed me the picture on her driver’s license and said how happy she was that they were going to use the same one for the renewed license.  She had a perfect crescent smile, toothless, and the biggest brightest brown smiley eyes I have seen.  Her wrinkles were like webs of light supporting the joyful expression on her face.  As we laughed, she reached to touch my hand that was on the stick shift, two times.  A gentle feathery touch.

She mentioned her road name at the start of our trip and I took her to her doorstep, 3 1/2 miles from our starting point.  As she got out she said because of the arthuritis in her spine, it takes her a while to get out of cars…she handed me the papers from her errands and got out.  She looked at me and took a great breath and said “I hope you are having a happy new year even though it hasn’t started yet.  You are going to have many, many, many happy new years!”  She took her papers, shut the door and continued talking all the way to her door (maybe 4 yards away).  She turned and smiled at me and blew me a kiss  and said “your first kiss for the new year”. 

I smiled the whole way home and could not wait to tell the story.

I feel great emotionally.  I feel really close to great physically.  I met an angel today.

I especially like this rendition of Another Day In Paradise by Phil Collins because I like what he is doing with his hair.  Don’t you?