Chemo

Went into for chemo on Friday morning.  I first had to get a port installed in my chest to accept the chemo drugs and obviate the need to get poked in the arm time and time again.  The procedure took about an hour.  They installed a self-sealing disk connected to a tube that attached to a neck artery   It is under my skin.  I am on my way to becoming a bionic woman!

Preceding the surgery, I was given some very sage advice by the surgery nurse ("If your kids want to listen to rap music, blast polka music instead.")  Then the surgeon asked me to pick some music to play during the procedure.  I said I didn't care; he selected Hawaiian music.  So expecting to hear some ukuleles or maybe Don Ho, I was instead treated to Jason Mraz.  (Ghost World moment?).  Other than feeling pretty sore, the surgery went well.  I have two bandages on my neck, and was told that I can't shower for 5-7 days.  A head's up would have been nice.  Breck offered to saran wrap me.  Thanks dude.

An hour later I was given anti-nausea IV and the chemo drugs.  Nothing to write home about.  They let us go home, I picked out a granny wig from the wig bank.  I have already cut my hair short to ease the transition.  Apparently, my hair likes to stand up now, so the granny (or lunch lady) look is what I have going for me anyhow.  It doesn't really matter though because my hair should fall out within the next couple of weeks.  I've been stocking up on hats and scarves.  

By the time we got home, I was feeling pretty ralphtastic.  I took all of the anti-nausea meds, but they didn't seem to ease my stomach.  Poor Breck was trying to take care of me, and our three children, all of whom were crying at one point or another.

I looked on the Internet for chemo nausea.   Apparently, those with a history of motion sickness (me!), being a woman (me!), being under 50 (me!) and having a history of morning sickness with pregnancy (me!!!!) have a higher likelihood of getting sick with chemo.  Super!  The symptoms of chemo are supposed to get worse with each round.  But, I can take it.  It's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

So that's the long and the short of it.  Cheers to modern medicine!  Also, thank you so much everyone for all of the support!  It's really great, and we really appreciate it.  I still need to speak with the oncology nutritionist and pharmacist to figure out what diet I should be eating to maximize my health and minimize interference with the specific chemo drugs.  Once we have that figured out (hopefully early this week) we can   move forward with figuring out meals, etc.

--Carrie