Radiation Day 12 & 13

The only thing that was really noteworthy was that my 12th radiation treatment fell on the same day as my Herceptin infusion. That made things a bit tricky. I arrived at the hospital close to 8:30 AM and got all hooked up. I had nurse Jeny, who is super nice! She was quick and efficient about things, so I started my infusion around 9:30 AM. In addition to the radiation, I was also supposed to have an appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Riseberg.

My infusion went as-planned and at 10 AM I went over to see Dr. Riseberg. I didn’t actually end up seeing him until almost 10:45 AM, so I had plenty of time to get in my daily games – Wordle, Worldle, Waffle, Yeardle and PopCultured. While talking to him I basically aired all of my “how do you know I don’t have cancer everywhere else in my body” concerns. He is just so freaking nice about all of it. He doesn’t make me feel like a totally insane person and he reassured me that there are specific things that worry him and none of the things I was worried about were of concern. For example, my shin has been hurting so I was concerned about metastases to my shin bone. He told me that would never happen, especially not as a primary site. It would be more likely in my thigh bone. But he also told me that the timeframe of being worried about that is actually a few years down the road from now – not while I’m still in active treatment. And lastly he told me of a patient of his – Susan. Susan had been diagnosed with HER2+ breast cancer. She had a 4 centimeter tumor and 13 positive lymph nodes. By comparison, I had a 6 millimeter tumor with zero positive lymph nodes. She received the same treatment as me. That was over 20 years ago. He basically told me that he has so much hope for me.

Other stuff

Last Saturday, we were putting Maddie to sleep. We had ordered her a new flash light so she could look at her books at night. Of course, she wanted to look in Sean’s mouth and then she looked in mine. Finally she asked me to look in her mouth. When I did, I noticed that her tonsils looked really big! It totally freaked me out. She had strep throat back right before Halloween. She finished her course of Amoxicillin and seemed to be fully recovered. She had been acting off before the weekend, but she still had a normal appetite and she had so much fun at gymnastics on Saturday.

We decided to take her to the pediatric urgent care to get her checked out. It felt so silly because she was bouncing off the wall and was in such a good mood. But we were concerned that her strep throat had come back. The doctor who saw her said that he wouldn’t even test her, because sometimes people just had big tonsils and it was nothing. He also told us that a positive strep test didn’t necessarily mean she needed to be treated. Of course, I felt silly because she didn’t seem sick, so we left.

On Wednesday, we picked her up and she looked miserable. Grandmom had actually picked her up and she said that Maddie was just laying on the floor when she got to school to pick her up. We took her temperature and it was 102.4. We gave her some Tylenol, ate dinner and then went to the urgent care. At the urgent care, they thought we would be reluctant to test her for anything because kids don’t like being tested. I almost screamed, “Oh my gosh, please test her for everything! That is exactly why we are here!” As expected, she tested positive for strep. Her tonsils were SO swollen, they looked like it would make it uncomfortable to swallow!

They wrote us a prescription for Augmentin (Amoxicillin with clavulanic acid). There has been an Amoxicillin shortage lately, so we had to check with three pharmacies before we could find it. I drove to pick it up and we gave her the totally gross tasting medicine before putting her to sleep. She woke up with no fever this morning and didn’t have a fever at all today. We had to keep her home from school because of her fever the day before, but she was also in no place to go to school. We sat around and watched movies all day to relax. She will be able to go back to school tomorrow.

All of that was a big reason why I didn’t write anything on my blog. I got home late and after getting her ready for bed, I was ready to go to bed myself. Hopefully this course of antibiotics will kill off this bug once and for all! I sincerely hope Maddie doesn’t end up having frequent strep infections.

Seven more treatments and this phase will be behind me too!