TREATMENT: 4 of 12

Big achievement! I’ve officially made it one month, or one-third, through treatment! Today’s treatment took more out of me. Maybe it was getting less sleep last night. Maybe it was the Benadryl. Maybe it was weight training last night. Maybe it’s just the treatment. Who knows exactly. All I do know is that I left feeling a little more run-down than the last three times.

I wanted to test the theory of getting to treatment earlier and seeing if that got me better placement for my infusion. I think my test disproved my theory! My appointment is normally scheduled for 8:30 AM. I believe they only bring patients in earlier for special reasons (e.g. their treatment takes a really long time and they don’t want to keep them there into the night). The staff isn’t scheduled to report until 8:30 AM, so people won’t reliably be there to check patients in or start any in-processing. They must make automatic infusion cubby assignments based on the desk location of your RN and Nurse Technician. So if they aren’t near a window – you won’t be!

Maddie didn’t really help us to get going any earlier, unfortunately either. She woke up a little earlier today, but it was still a trial getting her to brush her teeth, get the pigtails in and get socks and shoes on. Then she HAD to have toast. Nothing else would do. We didn’t have any of her normal bread left, so we had to borrow a slice from Grandma. Then she needed a baggie with her name on it because everything needs to be labeled and dated at daycare (otherwise you receive a special message reminding you of that). But after all of that, she got to school and then we drove to the hospital.

When we arrived, I was checked-in quickly and taken to my cubby. It had no window, and it was right next to the incoming thoroughfare. But I immediately noticed there was no Paxman machine which is what I need to do my scalp cooling. I didn’t want to freak out, but I also didn’t want to experience a major delay or tried to be talked into how that wasn’t important this one time. Luckily, neither of those things happened! My Nurse Technician, JoAnn, was all over it and she had a machine moved into my spot. Brianna was my RN and when she came to hook up my port and draw my blood, she and JoAnn told me they were going to help me move to a special, private room that was going to be opening up very soon! That ended up being really nice because it had a sink in it where I could get my hair nice and wet for my scalp cooling. 

Alright, I have to confess. I did work a little bit this morning while I was waiting for my infusions. I know my doctor said not to work and JoAnn even asked my mom in amazement if I was actually working. But today is a busy day for some status update meetings and it’s really hard to miss those from a first hand perspective. So I just chose to dial-in and “sneak in the back” for a bit to hear. It will really help to not feel so behind and it only happens every other Wednesday. Once the Benadryl starts though, I definitely don’t work!

But everything else went extremely smoothly! My bloodwork came back and all of my labs were normal! Not just normal for people receiving chemo, but normal for a normal human being! That just seems nuts to me! It has to be some combination of my body doing well on the treatment, the frequency of the treatment being easier to tolerate, maintaining my cardiovascular exercise routine, incorporating weight training and eating well. After all the infusions were done, we ended up heading home around 3:30 PM.

I was feeling – and I’m still feeling – really tired. It’s the kind of tired where you aren’t exactly sleepy, but you just don’t feel like moving your body parts. I don’t have any pain or nausea. I do have those stupid burps though. Everything I drink makes me burp. It almost seems like breathing makes me burp! I am extremely thankful for uneventful infusions with no reactions or weird feelings afterwards. I know the treatments will build on one another, but if I can avoid any major infusion reactions, that will feel like a huge success in and of itself.

When Maddie arrived home from school, I could hear her asking after me. I was up on the bed laying down and not moving from the location I dropped myself originally. She came upstairs and told me “Mommy, it’s not nap time. You cannot nap. You have to come downstairs and snuggle with Maddie on the couch. You can only lay on the couch.” So, naturally, I obeyed. She got her second COVID vaccine yesterday, so we think she was feeling some reaction from the shot. Grandma picked her up from daycare and said that Maddie requested to be carried home. She had a low-grade fever as well. But she was still in very good spirits. Hopefully tomorrow she is feeling better and can go back to school for water day! I think we should institute a water day at work. It looks like so much fun!