Feeling groovy

No chemo this week, and last week ended up pretty darn good considering the drugs in my system! I'm not sure if it's Dr. Gu or the new drug, but I wasn't incapacitated. Go Gu! My counts are still down, so I'm not out and about as much as I like, but that's good for the wallet :). This week I have to get out and get the Xmas shopping done. Joe volunteered, but that just wouldn't be the same, and it would be VERY good for me to have something else to do. I'll just carry a mask in the purse in case people start hacking and sneezing around me!

I'm not sure what happened, but I was supposed to have chemo next week and it has been moved to the week after. Maybe they thought I needed a Christmas break. It's the same as Thanksgiving; it will be really nice to have the time with family, but it's delaying the next scan (and my ultimate recovery) by another week.

Thank you to all the people at the RFC happy hour. The card was awesome and the girls will be spoiled! It was an incredible gesture and I'm sorry I missed the happy hour! We're planning mommy and me days with each of the girls while they are on break. Kate to Underwater world and Jenna to a spa (manny and peddy's). Thanks for making it possible!!!

Happy Holidays to everyone!!

baldie

I couldn't take it anymore. The hair falling out was a mess and the receding hairline in front wasn't fooling anyone. It was time to take action and that action was a number 2 setting on the clippers. I thought I looked pretty fierce the first day and 1/2. Then we went down to Mayo yesterday for treatment (again no fireworks, we may be on to something!!) and I had them show me how to tie a scarf on my head. They had me look in a hand held mirror at the back of my head and I nearly dropped the mirror. There are two patches of near black hair on the sides in the back. While this might be prized on ferret pelts, its not so cool ON MY HEAD! The rest of my head is a nice mix of salt and pepper - mostly salt - these, these patches of pepper look completely ridiculous. It won't matter much, since I'll never look at them again and y'all will be subjected to them more than I will :). It will not stop me from walking around without a hat or scarf. Since I don't wear makeup, do you really think I'll bother with headgear - except for the cold weather? FYI* the girls both stared at me when they got home from school on Monday, they had never seen their mother looking like a ferret pelt. Joe said it didn't look awful, ah Mr. Sensitive.

Dr. Gu is helping with the nausea and he gave me two more bags of herbs to brew up. Pretty sure I saw eye of newt in one of the bags.....I still feel pretty good today and told that to the interpreter when asked how I was feeling. He came back with "it usually takes the chemo two or three days". Okay Mr. Rain on my parade. That's true but I usually feel crappy after chemo until the REALLY Crappy starts on Friday. Today really wasn't that bad.

I know that some people swear by chiropractors, and others...don't. Today I saw one that also does nutrition and I liked what she said about my diet and the foods that I should be eating. It was getting to the supplements that seemed a bit voodooish to me. She laid some vials on my stomach to see which ones my body reacted to. That must be some pretty strong stuff if it can get through the bottle, my thick sweater, the fat on the top of my tummy, down to my innards and still send a signal to her that they are needed. I'll keep an open mind and see how I feel and let Dr. Chemo know which supplements I'm taking.

Ugh

This dose of chemo is almost through. I'm not really a fan of feeling drugged for 5 days, but hey, it could be worse. There were no allergic reactions!!! No open sores, no burst blood vessels, no fever, no chills, minimal headaches, very few stabbing pains. Really a pretty quiet week as far as side effects go. There is just an overwhelming fatigue and some nausea. Dr. Gu took care of the nausea with sessions on Wednesday and Friday. I didn't even have to take a pill! My own stupidity reared it's familiar head after the acupuncture session yesterday. I was starving after seeing Dr. Gu and there was an Arby's right across the street......can you believe I ate an Arby's sandwich after chemo and acupuncture? It did taste pretty good, but even though I wasn't nauseous, my stomach was protesting for the rest of the evening. Next time I'll bring some nuts to snack on during the ride home. I'm still tired, but that seems to be slowly fading away, hopefully by tomorrow things will be back to normal - (there's that word again, I'm unsure of the definition at this point).

One of the new chemo drugs, Navelbine, is given on day one and day eight, so we'll be back down at Mayo on Tuesday, that will complete round two of chemo. We'll be doing another PET scan after round 3 to see how everything is responding. I've been having PLENTY of conversations with God on how that's supposed to go.

The girls are excited to go scarf shopping. Jenna wants to get me a snowman scarf/hat, but I have no idea where to go?? We may have to buy some material and have Mersa make a scarf. She has talent, I would try and sew it together and it would look like a bad blanket.

Thanks to Barb, Lisa, Ann, and Chuck for the yummy meals! Seasons Greetings!!

New drugs!

Mom told me to be less eventful today as we left the house and the Dr. told me to have a "boring day" after our consult. So far I am for once listening to my elders. We got two chemo drugs in without fireworks!!! Hurray for Team Solheid :). There was some confusion in the chemo ward when the nurses wanted to verify with the Dr. that the orders were right. The regimen he has chosen is not normal (but look who it's for). The two drugs, Carboplatin and Navelbine, are not usually given together and the dose of Carboplatin was unusually large. The nurses were ok with the explanation from the Dr. and went about poking me with needles and handing out prep drugs like candy. The really good news is that they shrunk the steroid dose in half. I HATE STEROIDS. After last Wednesday I had Roid rage and spent most of Friday mad at my circumstances, full of joint pain, swollen, and had a lot of pain in my scars. I had thought most of these effects were due to chemo, but after just getting steroids and benadryl last week, it seems that only half my side effects are from the chemo. Good to know. The side effects from this chemo are supposed to be low blood counts, nausea and fatigue. We'll see if I end up with the "normal" side effects. For once it might be nice to be normal - whatever that is.

Kate doesn't like my short cut, she thinks it looks weird and is even more sceptical of my going bald. Jenna keeps wanting to pull the hair out. Both are going to be a little more affected by my baldness than I had originally hoped. We'll have to go scarf shopping together, so they can be more a part of the whole thing. If you see me in a Hannah Montana scarf, or a bright pink scarf with big, beautiful butterflies make sure you let the girls know how cool it is :) I like Rana's idea of documenting a wig search. It would be really fun to try on red, blonde, or pink hair and the girls would get a kick out of that too. My hair isn't long for my head, so it may come up pretty quickly. Hopefully by then I can figure out how to post pictures with the text, or I'm calling someone to walk me through it!

Blessings, love and hugs,
Liz

Haircut

It was time for a much shorter hairdo, the 3 inches we cut off a month ago was no longer working. Every swipe of the brush took out more clumps of hair and I was leaving a trail throughout the house. Since there was a Fantastic Sam's up the street and since I'm going to be bald in a couple weeks there didn't seem a point in spending a ton of dough on a cut. The girls at the shop were very sweet, but also very young (or so they seemed to me). They decided that I could go with a short cut and didn't need to shave it - yet. The conversation during the cut was....interesting. Let me give you a couple pointers. Don't tell someone going through chemo that they should "watch out" and that they are "going to get tired". At least they didn't ask "how long do you have"!! It is okay to talk about chemo, just don't tell someone what they are going through. Like I said they were sweet, so I didn't lay into them, and I got a nice scalp massage out of the deal :)

Mom comes tonight. She stays over on the nights before chemo since we usually have to leave before the kids get on the bus. Thank goodness, it keeps things almost normal! Kate likes her dog better than our own, she doesn't sneeze or pant (0r yak on the carpet- the dog, not Grandma). But while the dog is excellent with kids, she doesn't seem to share the same excitement for contact that Kate does.

A couple shout outs.... Thanks to Brad and Anna, Roberta, Ray and Becky, Aunt Gloria, Karla, and Jeanne for the generous and thoughtful cards and gifts. Isn't it amazing that y'all can make me feel lucky through all this?

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I sure did!

Still no chemo

My body does not like chemo. I think it's pretty smart that way, but when you're fighting cancer it gets a little problematic. Yesterday started out getting my blood tested in Eden Prairie. Deb came and picked up the girls for a playdate (after Kate cried for 45 minutes about wanting to stay with mommy - but of course she ended up having a great time), and Joe on the ready to take me to Mayo if the blood counts were high enough. Turns out the counts were fine and we headed down to Mayo for a 2:30 chemo appt. We were a couple minutes late because my hair started falling out yesterday and I didn't realize this would take an extra 10-15 minutes in the shower to pick all the hair off me, clean the drain and some of the shower. The hair is now in a pony tail since that seems to hold it all together and it only falls out when the pony comes out and I brush it. YUCK! I don't mind the hair falling out, it's just the mess that it seems to be making all over my clothes and the house. Although it will get me out of cooking again :) We don't have a supply of hair nets, tee hee.

After being 5 minutes late at Mayo, it took them about 45 minutes to call me back and then they asked for my blood counts. Since the clinic wouldn't release them to me, they had faxed them to my Dr.'s nurse earlier. The chemo nurse couldn't get ahold of the nurse so she had to have the clinic refax the counts to her. By now it's 3;45 and I asked if we were going to have time since they close at 5:30. She explained that I would be the last one out, but they wouldn't make me shut off the light or take out my own IV. How nice. Then we started talking about the shot of Neulasta (this is the shot to get my counts back up), and she said that I should have it tomorrow or Friday. I was worried about Target getting the shot on short notice, so she called down to the Mayo pharmacy to get the ball rolling down there. By this time, I had taken the anti nausea pill, the benadryl by IV and they started the steriod (both the benadryl and steriod are to prevent reactions to the Taxotere - for those googling). It's the same drug I had the reaction to last time. Once the steriod was done, they started the Taxotere and the fireworks went off again. I told the nurse I was having a reaction and wanted to throw up, Joe gave me a bucket and I dry heaved/coughed a couple times and got really hot again. The pressure on my chest was offset by the nausea this time. They turned off the drug immediately and checked my blood pressure and oxygen levels again. They called the Dr. on call (mine was taking a long weekend) and she came and stared at me for a bit. This reaction was worse than the last time, and I had already had the benadryl so the new Doc was not excited about giving me either drug (I was supposed to get a new drug after the Taxotere). They rescheduled me for next Tues with my dr. and a chemo session after another consult. TROUBLE! The good news is that Thanksgiving will be much more pleasant than we had all been expecting! We also canceled the Neulasta shot since there was no chemo. Maybe third time will be a charm....

FYI, I tried to drink the witch's brew yesterday (the acupuncture potion) but couldn't get it down. I'm really not excited about drinking liquid dirt with some tar mixed in. Thought about putting some agave nectar into it, but didn't want to waste my entire supply on crappy tea. We'll try again today, but don't hold your breath.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my cancer angels out there!!

no chemo

There was no chemo yesterday. My blood counts were too low. We're going to try again tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm able to get my blood checked in Eden Prairie and if the white blood cells decide to make an appearance we can book it down to Mayo for an injection of cancer fighting potion. My oncologist doesn't want to use the same chemo as the first week (apparently everyone does not get skin rashes and burst eye blood vessels from the stuff - who knew?). We're going to try a new one with the chemo from the 2nd week. That means I'll feel crappier than I did a couple weeks ago. That's the bad news, the good news is that I only have to get this stuff once every 3 weeks. I'll let you know how that goes next week, right now I think it's a great plan because I'll have two weeks of feeling pretty good and one sucky week. Like I said, I'll let you know if that thought lasts through next week.

Guess what I did today! I saw Dr. Gu. That's right acupuncture. When calling to make the appt, Dr. Gu himself answered, which is great, except he doesn't speak English. He studied in Beijing, China, which leads you to believe that he must really know his stuff, but it makes for an interesting phone conversation. It went something like this:
Hi, I'd like to make an appt with Dr. Gu
Ya, I Dr. Gu
Great, do you have any openings for next Tues the 25th?
Tomorrow?
No, Tuesday the 25th, next week.
Ah, next week 24th
No, next week the 25th, Tuesday
Ah, yes, Tuesday the 25th. What time?
How about 10am?
Ya, Ya. Your name?
Liz Solheid, L.I.Z
Lic?
No Liz
Lic?
No Liz, Elizabeth
Ah Liz
Could you give me your address or directions (I know you're thinking this was a bit optimistic, but at this point all I had was the phone number)?
Ya, Ok (then some nervous laughter) then he hung up.

Luckily I was able to find everything I needed on the web and Lisa took me to the appt. I was VERY relieved to see an interpreter when we walked in, so the medical history part was painless. Although Dr. Gu asked me "How are you" and I thought he was asking how old I was so I just volunteered "42" and it took him a minute to figure out that I had misunderstood. The interpreter came back in (he had gone to answer the phone) and we continued on. Dr. Gu heard the history, took my pulse in both arms, looked at my tongue and decided I had a kidney or spleen deficiency and he would have some herbs (there were really sticks) waiting for me after the session. The needles didn't hurt at all, he put them on my back, around the scar on my leg and in my ankles. I felt great after, but I felt pretty good this morning anyway. After making the tea (it tasted horrible, but how do you really think twigs and bark are going to taste), I'm quite sure there is NO way I'll be able to drink it during chemo, but I can't be the first person to tell him this. If I have chemo tomorrow I'll go back on Friday and then we'll really be able to tell if it helps or not. I have enough stick tea to last until Sunday (you drink it twice a day and they are 8oz portions), but it will probably last through mid next week if the chemo taste thing kicks it up a notch.

By the way, Rana made seaweed soup for me this weekend, it was really good! Can you believe all the things I get to try? Mary brought over some Indian food and it tasted good too! Life's an adventure, I'm on for the ride!

Thanks again to all my cancer angels. I could write pages of thank yous and still forget someone. The comments, the letters, the presents, the food, the babysitting, y'all are incredible and I can't say thank you enough!!!!!

pissed off

I'm done doing research on my type of cancer. Here's what I've found: 1) it's referred to as CUPS, cancer w/ an unknown primary source. 2) Only 2-5% of all cancer is diagnosed this way 3) Many times they can't tell the primary source even at autopsy 4) Only 10-15% of CUPS patients live past the first 9-12 months after diagnosis 5) Due to the wide range of possible cancer types, it's hard to treat 6) If you want to play statistics, my cancer is probably breast or lung.



The information I could find on the Internet is all pretty old, so I looked at the cancer library down at Mayo on Wednesday. It wasn't any more uplifting than the old stuff, so we're done with it. My case is all my own and there are extenuating circumstances to my situation so that the statistic above doesn't apply. First, how do I know it wasn't made up? Ask Brian, I used to make up my own stats all the time. My new stat for this situation would be something like 80% of those diagnosed respond well to aggressive chemotherapy. Now doesn't that sound better?? Second, there are all kinds of people that are diagnosed, wouldn't the 40ish, healthy crowd do better than the older sedentary crowd? Lastly, I have two small children whom are the most special people in the world to me and they deserve to have their mom around for a lot longer than the next 9 months. If I weren't around who would tell Jenna in a couple years when she will really need to hear it, that she is one of the most caring kids I've ever seen? Who would tell her how smart, beautiful and wonderful she is? She once said to me "how come you get mad at me sometimes, but I never get mad at you?" Ouch. Unfortunately she was right. Who's going to tell her that she is self possessed in a way that took me 40 years to achieve? She has the ability to stand up for herself that I'm not sure I could mimic even now. If I weren't around who would tell Kate that she commands a room as soon as she walks into it? Who would tell her that her ability to engage people will become one of her greatest assets? Who would tell her how smart, beautiful and wonderful she is? Who will tell her that her laugh, which usually comes very easily, is one of my favorite sounds in the world?



I've spent the last couple days pissed off because of the research and because I now have no white blood cells. Since I can't fight infection, I have to stay at home and avoid people who are sick. There is a chance I won't be able to receive chemo on Monday because of the white blood cells and more than anything I want to keep going to get it over with. So I was pissed off. Then Rana and Eric invited me in for some juice and made me laugh and just like the warm brownies, suddenly everything wasn't as awful as it had been 10 minutes before. Rana also introduced me to Julie today. She had breast cancer 4 years ago and it was SO nice to talk to someone who's been through chemo and surgery. She has such a wonderful perspective on the whole journey that I'll be thinking about that lunch for days to come. I also received a couple cards today, one was hilarious (thanks John), and the other beautiful (thanks Sharon). It reminded me of the incredible people I've met and had the privilege to call friends and of the incredible luck I've had with the people I get to call family. It's hard to stay pissed off when you have those kind of people around you.

Warm Brownies

What a difference a day brings. That and a pan of warm brownies. Doug and Heidi brought over soup, bread and warm brownies yesterday and those brownies somehow turned the entire day around! One minute I was barely able to play my 113th game of Trouble with Kate and two brownies later I sewed on three buttons, patched a pair of jeans, finished a load of laundry and managed to hose off in the shower. It is marvelous to not have to worry about calories as you're downing your second brownie (did I mention they were warm?). There really isn't a way around losing weight while on chemo, all you're trying to do is survive and food becomes one more thing that you're supposed to do. This relationship to food is new, previously I've always enjoyed my food. Even during a stomach flu I was able to keep eating, and eating, and eating. But when you lose 5-10 pounds a week during the first round of chemo, it's time to take in some calories! Don't freak out, I'm not wasting away, but I'd rather my body spent it's time fighting cancer and chemo side effects instead of trying to turn muscle into energy.

The brownies also tasted marvellously good because I'd been trying to follow a no sugar, no flour diet. Several of the books out there state that sugar - when it spikes in the blood stream, is bad. It's what feeds cancer, and is bad for the population in general. I always thought that I'd end up a diabetic with my sweet tooth, but that was supposed to be MUCH later. Anyway, it is a huge challenge to change the diet at this point, and most of the time I don't have the energy to figure it out. This week should give me some time to get prepared for the next round of hell, hopefully I can make some progress. In the meantime, I agree that while we do eat too much sugar, every now and then a couple of warm brownies just might be what the Dr. ordered.

It is time to start dabbling in complimentary therapies. Water doesn't taste right at this point and there isn't a food that sounds good. I think I would have been more comfortable today if I had been able to rip out my uterus, but that didn't seem to be a good long term solution. Some drugs must take longer to annihilate things in your body than others, last week things had started clearing up at this point. I'm never sure what the aches and pains are from - but they started piling up today. There are some sores popping up out of my skin and it's very difficult to leave them alone. It's time to start on the list of acupuncturists, and whomever else can help relieve some of the nastiness that chemo brings!

The girls are at a birthday party tonight and having a ball! Thank goodness for cousins, aunts and uncles who spend so much time entertaining the kids, they hardly notice their mom is sick.

No shot for you!

So far so good for this chemo session. The only side effect is a tender tummy and a wee bit more tired than usual. I was supposed to go in for a shot yesterday, but since they didn't give me one of the chemo drugs, they felt the shot wasn't necessary. It's supposed to help your body build up white blood cells after the drugs eliminate them from your bod. The good news is that Mayo gave me a prescription for the shot and said that I could have it done up here in the cities. The bad news was the week long effort to get the clinic to agree to give me the shot. The nursing supervisor was all freaked out that they were giving oncological treatments at the clinic, until my primary care Dr. had to finally step in and tell her "ITS JUST A SHOT". He agreed to be responsible for all legal ramifications should I spill a drop of cancer blood on the clinic floor - or whatever she was worried about. Then I had to call and tell them "just kidding"! Maybe next month.

I love my Dr. - Aaron Timmerman. He's great. I went in asking if my shoulder was ok to train for a triathlon, and mentioned that I had passed out a couple times and that my leg still hurt after a 10k 3 weeks ago. He LISTENED and ordered an x-ray of the leg - who does that after you just said you were in a race?? and an MRI of the brain. There was a sledding accident in January when a tree got in the way of my sled and ended up winning a very short right of way contest which left me unconscious at the bottom of the hill - but too stubborn to be seen at the time. The x-ray showed a spot on the leg, so we added a leg MRI to the brain test. The brain MRI showed nothing - that's actually how they phrased it - but there was a nice bright spot still showing on my leg. At that point I was referred to the University cancer clinic for numerous other tests and pokings. The blood work never showed cancer, the CT scan showed another tumor on the spine, but the U still wasn't convinced of cancer. Three surgeries later, everyone is now convinced it's cancer (see Dr. Doom and Gloom below). Dr. Timmerman still checks up on me and follows the case - he gets updates from the Mayo and the U. He's the only one that calls back the same day I call him - most of the time personally. In this day and age of incredibly busy health care professionals I think its commendable. My neighbor is also a Dr. and was phenomenally helpful in getting answers out of my surgeon and getting me into the Mayo in a very timely manner. Some of these Dr.s are just really good guys. Who would have thunk it?

Chemo - Round one, session II

11/11/2008

Chemo session number deux today. A round of chemo for me is three weeks. The first week I receive one chemo drug (with steroids and anti-nausea meds). Week two is supposed to be the same drug as week one with a 2nd more powerful drug and the usual steriods and stuff. The third week I get to relax and recover. Then the next round starts it all over.

Today was a little bit different.....when the nurses found out about reactions last week they called the Dr. over to stare at me. He took a look at the rash and decided that we were going to skip the drug from last week and just go right to the 2nd drug. He told me to be a little less eventful and left. Then the nurses verified that I had taken the steriods yesterday and this morning prepping for this drug. Of course! I took them yesterday morning and this morning. "What about last night?" whoops. So there was another call to the Dr. to see if I could just get an IV of the steriod to make up for the missed doseage. Joe at this point has decided that he needs to read EVERYTHING that regards my treatment - I can't be trusted any longer.....

The Dr. agrees and I get set up with another round of steriod through IV. After the IV is done they start the chemo and two minutes later have to stop. The lady across the room (receiving her own chemo) says she has never seen anyone turn so red. There was a heavy weight on my chest, I thought I was going to throw up and started to get really, really hot. All of a sudden there were three nurses running at me, one of them pushing something. My first thought was it was a crash cart and I was going to protest VERY loudly that I was still awake and breathing, but it was just a blood pressure machine. As soon as they stopped the drug it started to get better. They gave me some benadryl and yes, called the Dr. At this point they started calling me trouble, but in a sweet sort of way. Since I recovered so quickly they decided to go ahead and try and finish the session, but start more slowly. After the benadryl everything went fine and the rest of the session ended without drama. The Dr. came back to stare at me some more and said that we'll need to discuss what happens next round after we see the side effects this week. So I've got that going for me! Right now the benadryl is leaving me tired, but I have to take steriods tonight which should wake me enough to keep me up until around 3am. Maybe I'll post another story....

LOVE the comments. Thanks guys!!

Chemo -round one

11/10/2008

Chemo sucks. It's official. I thought I was on top of the world after Tuesday and not getting sick. By Wed afternoon the wheels fell off and I had fever, chills that wouldn't stop, a skin rash all over, burst vessels in my eyes, and headaches that wouldn't allow me to move. Nice initiation. The good news is that the side effects clear up in time TO DO IT AGAIN. Whoever invented chemo must have been some misogynistic a$$. You end up bald, bloated, oh and one of the side effects is acne.....need I say more?

Switching gears......The cards, flowers and surprises have been incredible. Thanks to all my cancer angels out there!! You have no idea what a difference it makes!

A brief history

11/4/2008

Today was the first day of chemo. First there was blood drawn, next a visit with the chemo doc and then the big event. It would have been less of an event if I wouldn't have started bawling as soon as I checked in. There was a 13-15 year old girl that was called in before me, so between that and the wristband that for some reason finalized the fact that I did indeed have cancer, I couldn't pull it together. The nurse offered up some additional drugs , but the thought of having to take steriods, antinausea pills, chemo AND a valium seemed to set me straight. At what point does the body just say ENOUGH???

I have cancer. Just cancer. The correct term is carcinoma of unknown source. There is not a primary source that chooses to show itself, but it sure is making itself a nuisance. The scans are showing 6 tumors on various bones. Two have been cut out during surgeries. The tumur on my femur left enough of a hole that there is now a metal plate attached with 5 screws to prevent fracture. Apparently I'll never be an elite runner, but there wasn't much chance of that before the surgery either. The other tumor that was removed was on the manubrium (sternum). High enough that I won't be wearing Vneck anything again.

After the surgeries, radiation started. There are 3 tumors on my spine and they aren't easily accessed by surgery, hence the need for radiation. Two of the tumors are on one vertebrae and they had started to bust out of the bone and into the surrounding area and stood a chance of pushing on the spinal cord. The third tumor wasn't in a position to bother anything just yet, so we're ignoring that one for now. ...

The big hole in my femur also deserved some radiation to discourage any cells from starting another attack. At the time of the surgery an oncological removal of bone was not done. The U wasn't convinced that the tumor was cancerous, and I'm not sure they would have anyway since they were already aware of a couple tumors on the spine at the time of the surgeries.

The radiation lasted for two weeks and left me tired, nauseated and with big, red, patches on my back, stomach and butt. Nice. It was the radiation oncologist (Dr. Doom and Gloom) that explained what we were dealing with. I asked if the tumors were going to be done at the end of the two weeks and her response was that they weren't trying to cure me. What I heard after that was "blah, blah, blah, we'll try and make you as comfortable as possible, blah, blah, blah". She is also the one that confirmed I'd be at a stage IV if there were a primary source identified. We don't like her.


The medical oncologist was much more pragmatic. He said we need to wait and see how the cancer and I respond to chemo. We have to wait through 2-3 rounds of chemo before another scan, which is why I believed I was ready for this. At 5- 6 rounds we can take a break from the chemo......

The good news is that I'm young and stong enough to be given a triple dose of one of the drugs. That is good news...right??? It takes about two hours for the first treatment and I got a heating pad for my hand to lessen the discomfort. You know it can't be good for you if it hurts going in. There are 6 other chairs in the room and there were only 3 other people at any given time in the room with me. NONE of them looked around and they mostly pretended to sleep. Maybe that's how you feel after a couple rounds of the crap. We'll see soon enough.

For now it's time to take the Hannah Montana messenger bag and head back to Jenna, Kate and Joe. Don't worry I asked Jenna if I could borrow the bag for the day!