Treatment: 9 of 12 – 75% done!

Today started off like every other day. Joanne was my nurse again today and she really is great. She talks a lot, but so do I. Things aren’t always quick, but she is very attentive. We arrived around 8:00 AM and my labs were done by 9:20 AM. My labs all looked really good again to the team. My blood counts were just a little low for normal people, but my nurse said they looked awesome for going through treatment! After ordering my drugs, which took a bit longer today, we started my first infusion at 10:15 AM (or around that time). That would mean that with all the rest of my infusions and my post-infusion cooling, I should have been done around 2:45 PM.

My oncologist’s nurse practitioner (NP) came to chat with me today and I told her about some sharp little pains I was having in my right armpit area. Of course, this has been kind of freaking me out but I’ve been trying to reassure myself that it doesn’t mean I have metastatic breast cancer. She felt my arm pit and didn’t feel any inflammation or anything. More than likely, it is just some nerve pain that is acting up while I’m getting my chemo from the other little random pains I experience. After all, I do have scar tissue that is forming there still and it is healing from my operation. The funny part is that when I was having this conversation with my NP I was super groggy on Benadryl, so the whole conversation felt extremely dream-like. She actually came back later when I was a little more “with it” and that’s when she actually physically examined me. I asked her things over again because I wasn’t sure whether I actually talked her or if I had dreamed it!

Unfortunately, my day didn’t go quite as smoothly as previous treatment days. Luckily, it was nothing related to my actual treatments. I had texted Sean at 11:45 AM to tell him I had 2 pre-med infusions, my Taxol and then post infusion left, so that was putting me at the 2:45 PM mark for completion. I woke up from my Taxol infusion and noticed it was 2:00 PM! That couldn’t have been correct. I was supposed to be done closer to 1:15 PM. It made me freak out a bit because my scalp cooling is on a timer and I had the cold packs on my feet, which we had never switched out. For some reason they must not have been on top of transitioning me from my pre-meds to the Taxol, so we started that 45 minutes late. Fortunately, the scalp cooling thing just keeps going no matter what, so I was never without the cooling. But I basically had a 1.25 hour pre-infusion cooling instead of just 30 minutes. That meant we weren’t able to leave until closer to 3:30 PM, but I think they restarted my count down closer to 2:15 PM so we ended up being there until 3:45 PM.

Also, I did remember to bring my thermometer this time! As you can see from the picture progression, my starting oral temperature was 97.90 right before I put my cap on. By the end of my Taxol infusion, my oral temperature was down to 96.93. So that means my body temperature dropped about a degree during the whole cooling period. After my infusion was over, I did try to warm up some with hot tea. My mom also gave me her furry sweatshirt to wear which helped to keep more warmth in my neck, shoulders and back.

All in all, it was a successful 9th treatment. I tolerated all of my medications very well and had no issues from that. That really feels like the most important thing. I was a bit irritated from having to be there so much longer, because it doesn’t seem like there was a good reason for my infusions being delayed. It’s possible the pump was going to slow or it wasn’t draining completely when the fluid level got low so it wasn’t doing it’s normal alarms to say it was done. Either way, the biggest lesson learned was just to probably be more cognizant of the timing and, now that I’m so much more out of it, I’m going to have to rely more on my hospital companion to time it out themselves since we can’t rely on the equipment necessarily. But again, it was a good treatment! Only 3 more to go and the end can’t come soon enough!

In other news…

We came home and decided to get some Indian for dinner, which was pretty delicious! Not sure how great that is for my heartburn, but it was what I felt like eating – so we got it! We also enjoyed some of the leftover desserts that my mom has made while she’s been here (peanut butter ice cream, blueberry cobbler, blackberry ice cream, etc.).

We let Maddie watch a little bit of Moana afters school while we waited for the food to arrive, but then we told her we were going to do other activities after dinner. She was too impatient to wait for a treat, so she had her own before we had ours. It’s really funny that she doesn’t seem to want actual dessert items. She’s most happy with a piece of chocolate and a date or a piece of chocolate and a marshmallow. Even if we gave her something, she usually doesn’t eat the whole thing or she seems to be over it pretty quickly. Not sure why exactly. She is drawn to more candy-like items than desserts, per se. But I’m totally okay with giving her a piece of chocolate and a date if that’s what she really wants! Definitely healthier than a big cookie or something.

Then we went upstairs and tried to read some books. We got her a new book that is the Moana movie, but in book form. She really likes it, but she does this thing where she says, “I’m going to be the teacher!” Then she looks at the book, occasionally holds it up to show us the pictures and narrates the story herself. It’s kind of funny. I’m not sure why she won’t let us read her some stories. Ginny came upstairs to be with us and she snuggled into Maddie’s stuffed animals to listen to the stories.

Finally, I’m trying to keep my lips much more moisturized this time in hopes of avoiding another round of cold sores during this treatment. I really, really, really do not want to have another cold sore. That was so miserable and probably contributed to me not wanted to ride as much this past week. During this last treatment cycle, I really only rode on Thursday, Sunday and Tuesday and I only did 1 round of weight training this week. I just didn’t feel up to more. I’m not giving myself a hard time about that, but I would like to at least get 4 days of cycling in and 2 days of weight training. I’m still pretty proud of myself for sticking with it and I’m also thankful that my body is good enough to stick with it.

Nine down, three more!