Treatment: 8 of 12 – Two-Thirds Complete!

My experience with this round of treatment

Another successful treatment is in the rear-view and I have completed two-thirds of my chemo treatments! This time I realized I could use one of my numerous cold packs to ice my port when I got there so that by the time the nurse came by, she could just insert my port right away! We were very chatty with the nurse so I thought I had delayed my labs getting done. Jeny was my nurse again from the week before and she probably left my cubby at 8:51 AM with my bloodwork. My first blood result came back by 8:57 AM! All of my blood results were back by 9:30 AM and so she ordered my meds. My Herceptin infusion was started around 9:54 AM, which is a new record for my earliest start! My Taxol (chemo) infusion finished at 12:27 PM, so all I had left was my 90-minute post-infusion scalp cooling.

All of my labs came back pretty solid as well. I’m still hovering around the low figures for all of the things they care about (e.g. white blood cells, red blood cells, hematocrit, etc.), but I don’t seem to be crashing. My oncologist said before all of this started that most people hang out around the lower numbers and fluctuate up and down. My type of chemo is less harsh on the bone marrow, which is what drives down your blood counts (is my elementary understanding).

We got home on the earlier side from my treatment and I was pretty exhausted. We stayed up to watch Serena Williams’ US Open match, which she seemed to fairly easily make it through. I took a Benadryl and it helped me fall asleep again. I was able to get a very restful night of sleep into Thursday morning. All that rest allowed me to wake up feeling charged up and ready to ride my bike! Its was a great ride, but I tried to take it a bit easier so as not to totally overdo anything in case that made Friday harder. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what was going to end up being the thing that made this treatment round harder.

Around mid-day I started feeling kind of crappy. I was feeling a bit chilly (but still getting those glorious hot flashes) and had the “all-overs.” I was worried that I was maybe catching a cold from Maddie. But then I realized my lip was bothering me and that I probably was developing a cold sore! UGH! The injustice! I hate cold sores so much. I’m fortunate that I don’t really get as many as I get older. In truth, I was kind of surprised that I hadn’t gotten one during treatment. I figured that with treatment knocking down my immune system a bit and stressing my body that I would almost certainly get one. But, after making it this far without one, I thought maybe it wouldn’t necessarily happen. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case and I have one of the worst ones I’ve had in awhile. It’s right in the center of my top lip and it looks like I had a horrible Botox reaction in just one spot.

I’ve been applying Abreva, which has been the best thing to help me in the past. I’m preparing myself that this cold sore could we worse and last longer because of everything going on with my body and it operating at a higher stress level. I’m hoping that won’t be the case, but that seems to be how it’s going to go. Once I get past the swelling phase, it won’t hurt quite as much. I’m hoping that will be tomorrow. For people who don’t experience cold sores, the worst part of them for me is that it makes me feel ill, they can make your entire face hurt and I always get a little bit of the blues. So even though it is only a little spot on your lip, it actually effects your entire body.

Other than this horrid cold sore, this round of treatment hasn’t been terrible either. I’m just feeling slightly more tired and worn out, and I feel just a little bit ickier in general. I have still manage to avoid nausea though and my appetite is just fine (probably too fine!). I was also able to get in a weight training workout in on Monday and Thursday, and I took Ginny for a nice long walk today!

My art therapy experience

Around the time that I had started my Taxol infusion, I was drunk on Benadryl and wrapped up in hospital blankets. My hands and feet were also occupied with their little cooling routines in my socks and mitts. I’m in and out of awareness and this really nice lady comes by to ask me about something. I can barely hear her (or see her because my eyes can’t stay open) and I begin to realize that she is asking me if I want to do a craft. I’m not trying to disparage her, but imagine going up to someone who is wrapped up like a mummy and they look drugged up and thinking to yourself, “Gee, this person looks like a person who really wants to do a craft!” I cannot imagine I looked like a person who was poised to jump into a craft.

While I’m trying to engage her in conversation, I think that I’ve basically negotiated the arrangement where she will make a craft for Maddie that I can take home to her. I’m assuming that I will not do anything to make that happen except watch. I couldn’t help it, but I actually ended up falling asleep before she came back. She was incredibly committed to making sure I had this therapeutic art experience, because when I woke up she was there chatting with my mom with all of her art supplies! We felt like it was probably therapeutic for her to be there with us, because she shared her story with us. She had actually been in my position years ago and was a breast cancer survivor. The hospital had also commissioned several art pieces from here that can be seen around the buildings! She was clearly a very talented and creative person and it was nice to chat with her. I love doing crafts, especially paper crafts, but I’m not sure my treatment days are the best days to do that activity. There’s just too much going on and I’m all out of sorts. Ultimately, she made a super cute box for Maddie to put her “Heart of Te Fiti” in since we don’t have a necklace like Moana’s to keep it in. Maddie loves it and keeps it on her night stand.

In other news…

We have thankfully had a fairly uneventful week as well. No one has gotten sick (including the dog), we’ve had no house emergencies and no critters have tried to come into our lives. Our local coffee shop and bakery, Cafe Dear Leon, has been closed the last few weeks for their summer break. Today was the first day that they’ve been open and we decided we’d stop by to get a coffee and some baked goods. Apparently, so did the rest of the neighborhood!

Typically, I would go between 7:00 AM – 7:30 AM. We probably got there closer to 7:30 AM and the line was very long! We ended up waiting 30 minutes to get our goods. A lot of our normal favorites were already sold out! We live in a neighborhood that has a lot of young people who do not seem to get up early, so no one is there normally at 7:30 AM. It was like the whole neighborhood was so sad that CDL had been closed these last couple of weeks that people must have gone to sleep early and set their alarms to get up! As regulars, it is somewhat irritating to feel like people are butting into your normal routine and disrupting your usual experience. But I am really happy that they have that amount of neighborhood support and we maintain such a great establishment.