Here's an update from my Doctor's visit yesterday, the second round of Taxol treatments and a recap of the day.
First of all, Ryan was nice enough to give up most of his day off to drive in with me, sit with me during the chemo, get me coffee from the gift shop and just be an all around support guy. This is huge since he is a busy working guy and has Grady and Chantal to care for too. I appreciated his support and perspective on things.
I spent spent a couple of hours working from home in the morning - amazing got a bit accomplished. Guillermo decided to join me for awhile, finding just the right place to sleep in between the keyboard and the monitor on my desk - amazing! He was a big help. :-)
Ryan and I drove off about 7:30am headed for GHC. I checked in and did the blood test, then had my appointment with Dr. Chen. This was a bit educational and I have a few more plans for the future now. First of all, he advised me that I need a total of 12 Taxol treatments, so....this means that I should have been scheduled for treatments to the end of October - bleah!! Things will be going on in that regard a bit longer. I told him that I am getting the numbness in my hands and feet occasionally. Apparently this can become a permanent disability that will stick with you after the treatment is over. They will be monitoring this to see how it progresses. Dr Chen also suggested that I make an appointment with Dr. Stepan, the surgeon, just to check in and possibly plan the date for surgery. It looks like that will be pushed to mid November at this point - a month later than I thought. Oh well...
I will be more diligent in getting in the Glutamine powder
three times a day to see if it backs off, stays stable or what. (Ryan had a
good suggestion - mix the powder with a very small amount of water to make it
like a shot, therefore not fouling up the other water I drink with all that
grit. Good suggestion, buddy!)
After my visit with Dr. Chen, it was time for the infusion. I had Tiffany as my nurse again this time. She is very good. First they flush the port out with saline solution to clean it out while we wait for the chemo to arrive from the pharmacy. When it finally did arrive it was about 10:00. This takes about an hour. As I was drinking a lot of water and coffee, I had to go to the bathroom before this was finished. That is OK as you can unplug the IV pole and travel with it. After I used the restroom I came back to finish up my treatment - two minutes at the most - wow! Turns out I could have waited for that. As the nurse was flushing my port, I told her it kind of hurt this time, which was a bit unusual. She took a look at the port and it had pulled out halfway - most likely when I stood up to go to the bathroom. This meant that the last 2-3 minutes of the chemo went under my skin and not into my vein - OY!! Since this a little bit of an emergency, they contacted the pharmacy and put an ice pack right away. I am to ice the area 4 times a day for several days - if it becomes very red, hot or swollen, I am to contact the hospital. Anyway, as of this morning it looks OK, just a little sore and pink. Sheesh, I felt like an idiot, especially since I only had two minutes to go and could have waited for the bathroom. Well, I won't do that again!Infusion finished, I made my next few appointments with scheduling and we were on our way to do errands and pickup Ryan's car at the body shop. (His fender had come loose on the Altima - they fixed it up and had it done in less than 24 hours). We headed over to have lunch at Ooba Tooba in Redmond - it's a Mexican Grill down the road from Ben Franklin and J. Michael's pub. Since I have the Pirq app on my phone recommended by Kevin, we had 30% off deal that started at 1:30. We got there just in time after shopping for milk at QFC. Placed the order including one for Chantal. They were really busy, but it seemed ours was taking a bit too long. Finally went up to the desk - they forgot our order! Had to do it over again, so we got it to go this time. They threw in chips and guacamole to make up for it and Ryan and I drove home to eat. By the time we dug in, it was probably close to 2:15 and we were hungry haven eaten breakfast at 5am! I had the Fajita Salad - really good and he had the Juan's special - awesome! Chantal came up a bit later and had her Taco special - she liked it too. It was worth waiting for, but put us a bit off schedule. After that ,we were all pretty tired. I took an hour's nap as I was feeling the effects of the chemo and the medications they gave me - especially the steroids.
Luckily, I did not have to cook dinner this evening thanks to the generous support of Trish from work. She had made an awesome Zitti Pasta with homemade meatballs that I was able to pop in the oven and warm up. We didn't end up eating dinner until after 8 since we all had lunch so late (Frank hung in there). Thank you Trish - and good luck to you in your new job!
About 11:30pm I decided to call it a night and try to sleep. Well, due to the steroids kicking in and drinking all that water, I was up and down all night. Finally got to sleep about 2:30am I think, so it will be kind of tired day today.
I feel a bit more wiped out from this Taxol treatment in the past, maybe just because I had the week off and forgot how it feels, I am not sure. Dr. Chen did say this has an accumulative effect, so that could be part of it as well.
Anyway, this is the latest, I am off to ice my swollen port area and drink the Glutamine powder and see what the day holds.
Thanks to everyone for all your support.
Cheers,
Jan
