The week after Round 8

Hello! I’m back. Sorry for the long absence. The fact is, I wasn’t feeling very well this last treatment and wasn’t able to write. I had a few people comment on the fact that they hadn’t heard from me and were concerned with how I was doing. I must say, it was rather touching to find people are actually aware when I don’t give an update. I have such a great support system in all of you.

I guess I will let you know how the chemo treatments have changed for me lately. A typical day of chemo goes something like this:

We leave our home in Fuquay-Varina at about 6:30 a.m. and drive to the hospital in Chapel Hill about an hour away. When I get there I check in and then get sent to the blood draw area. Here they access my port which is a permanent device that was put into my chest. It is nice to have because it means I don’t have to get an IV stuck into my arm each time. It is much less painful this way. Then they draw my blood for some tests and leave my port accessed with dangling lines so I can be hooked up to the chemo drugs later.

Then I meet with my doctor and she marvels at how amazingly my body is handling all of this and comments about the fact that I still have hair. She goes through the results of the blood draw, again says how great I am doing, determines that all my levels looking great and I am cleared for the next round of chemo. I especially like it when the nurse takes my vitals and my oxygen level is somewhere between 97-100%.

Then we go to the next floor and I get assigned a chair to sit in for the next several hours. They give me 5 pills and a bag of IV drugs to help control the nausea before we start the chemo. This is usually when I start typing my blog post. Then we start the first chemo drug which lasts 1.5 hours and I hardly notice that anything is going on. Then we start the second chemo drug and another drug simultaneously. The other drug is just something that will help my third chemo drug. Now the first few cycles I felt pretty good at this point. I would definitely experience the side effects of drug #2, namely the cold sensitivity issue and my legs wouldn’t work quite as well, but that was about all. I even remember going to the store on the way home one time. The second two drugs take 2 hours.

Then, after I have finished with all that they hook my third drug up to a pump, put it in a little fanny pack that I strap around my waist and we head home where life is pretty normal, I feel slightly off, until Sat. when I get to remove the pump. I continue to feel not quite right through the weekend but by Monday I am back to my normal self again.

Here is what was different with round #8. I started feeling sick the Wednesday before chemo in anticipation of chemo starting the next day. I had a lot of anxiety driving to the hospital and felt really sick through the whole process leading up to the chemo.

My visit with the doctor went pretty much as I described above. I asked her what my last scan showed about the size of the original tumor in my colon. Did they have actual dimensions to compare with the size it was before we started treatments? She said that tumor is now so small it didn’t even show up on the scan. We scheduled my second scan which will be Mar. 12. (My 12th and final chemo treatment will be two weeks later!)

Within half an hour of sitting down in my chemo chair I really started feeling sick. It started switching from anxiety nausea to real nausea. I couldn’t eat most of my lunch and before I left the hospital I lost what I had eaten for lunch into the garbage can next to me.

They gave me more nausea drugs and had me wait about 30 min. before sending me home where I spent the rest of the night losing everything else in my system. I’m not really sure what since I didn’t even think about eating dinner.

Brynn’s final performance of her play “Beauty and the Beast” was on Saturday. I managed to make it to that, somehow. I went to church on Sunday, but people could tell I wasn’t my usual chipper self. Monday I was sick and that night tossed my cookies again. Okay, I hadn’t really eaten cookies, but you know what I mean. I was still sick on Tuesday and finally Wednesday came and I was back to my normal self again! Today all is wonderful (Except writing this is making me feel a little sick, so believe me, you probably won’t get this kind of detail again. That probably makes you happy since you might be sick by now as well.)

But what I find amazing is, even though this round was pretty rough and I enjoyed it not at all, when I would kneel down to pray each night, all I felt was gratitude. Nothing but “thank you” would come to my mind. I truly believe I have experienced miracles and how can I not be grateful for that? It took until round 7 for the chemo to start knocking me down. Even though what I described here was worse than what I experienced the prior 7 rounds, I was still feeling myself again less than a week after chemo! Some people would be sick this whole time. Even though I got sick, it wasn’t constant, I really didn’t lose my lunch or dinner too many times. And the best thing of all is I am still here keeping this blog.

When we met with the kids and told them about my diagnosis, Brynn had just started rehearsing the Beauty and the Beast play. Wanting to give her some reassurance that I wasn’t going anywhere tomorrow, I said, “I am looking forward to seeing you in the play.” (I was thinking they were performing in November some time.) Then she told me that the performance would be the end of January. I didn’t let her know it, but my heart dropped. Had I just lied to my daughter?! Was there any chance I would make it until the end of January? I was thinking it would be such a blessing to make it until Christmas! But here I am, I saw her play, it is now February and I still have hair!!

About that, though. It did start falling out in chunks again. It had stopped really falling out, just little bits would go when I would shower or comb my hair but now massive chunks are falling again. I just may make it to the bald stage before this is over. But that would just be too typical. I don’t want to start being normal now. I have to keep making this whole cancer experience different from everyone else...

I think that is probably enough for now. Chances are you will hear from me again about 2 weeks from now. I am guessing it won’t be close to my next treatment. Thank you for all of your prayers and well wishes. It really does make a difference. Thank you for helping me get miracles.