Chemo Day 11 - The Last Day and Merry Christmas

It's just Christmas Day.  "The children are nestled all snug in their beds, while visions for sugarplums dance in their heads."  Or Apple products. :-)

It's 12:01am and again, I find myself riding on a post final chemo steroid high.  Wow - I can say PFC now.  I'm 10 hours PFC!  Hope to get to bed by 4 or 4:30am and sleep for a few hours.  Santa has already come and gone and other than online mahjong, looks like a quiet night.  I was planning to cook tonight for tomorrow, but I have plenty of time for that tomorrow.

So I'll blog about today.  What a day.  It was actually a good day at chemo.  Showed up and was immediately taken by a. how quiet it was (Christmas Eve?) and b. this was a Tuesday so all the normal Wednesday people weren't here.  Off to have port accessed (by someone I hadn't had, and she wasn't great).  I was back out in the waiting room for a while, observing others.  There was a father and a severely disabled daughter playing games, her in her wheelchair.  The father was looking for some outlets along the wall; I offered to move, but he found some and declined.  My husband told me later today that it was the wife/mother getting treatments and in between her appointments, was caring for the child.  I immediately counted my blessings.  

Into vitals I went, while watching my blood counts return on Patient Gateway.  They were low.  Lower than they had ever been.  I was worried they would postpone chemo.  I am very anemic and have zero immunity.  When my vitals were over, my vitals nurse (who is awesome and I've had every time and left her a little present) announced I was headed to infusion (huge sigh of relief) and to gather my husband and things.  

Cold capping goddess arrived in that time and the 3 of us went to infusion room 4!  With Infusion Nurse 1!  A full circle moment from 1st day to last day.  Favorite nurse, favorite room.  I lined up presents for IN1, IN2, IN3 and one of the port nurses.  IN1 came in and we were all excited.  She asked about the presents and I asked if she would deliver them for me.  She gathered them and headed out to deliver and to get my meds for the day.  She acknowledged in a serious tone that my counts were very low.  I had all the stories to support why I should get chemo - it's the last one, I'm a day earlier than my normal Wednesday.  Please please please let's be done with this.  And yes, I was to be done with this.

CCG and I headed to the private bath to prep, and still after 11 of these sessions, I accidentally sprayed her with the counter-intuitive mist bottle.  We prepped, did an A+ job and back into the infusion room we went.  CCG had brought me a London Fog Latte and the label was too precious to not share:


The Last Cold Cap - loved this!  Amazing!  So my tea was ready and I was going to be social the entire last 17 minutes of hell during the initial freezing if it killed me.  But it didn't and I chatted and joked with CCG and my husband and it was awesome.  Even the dizzy Benadryl didn't bother me too much.  

Said goodbye to CCG and thanked her profusely, and then it was my husband and I solo.  Oddly, I wasn't as sleepy as I normally am, so was up for a bit, eating Animal Crackers (chemo treat) and saltines.  I think it's the steroids that make me ravenous at the beginning of chemo, but I call it 'lunch'.  I had another little allergic reaction, IN1 stopped the taxol for a while, I begged for them to not give me MORE Benadryl (I had 4! Zyrtec + steroids at full throttle + full dose of Benadryl before treatment - please, no more).  Finally we were up and running and I fell asleep for the majority of the infusion.  

Once awake, it was time to de-access the port, remove my cold cap, and get over to that bell.  My team joined me and I read the poem and rang the bell.  Seemed like the right thing to do.  To acknowledge the end of chemotherapy.  Hopefully, I won't ever have to do that again.  11 treatments in 12 weeks was absolutely brutal.  

(I hope that video uploaded but you never know.). I cried a lot after ringing the bell.  From relief and joy and just being done with this stage of treatment.  I know weird, scary, and dark-basement-depressing radiation is waiting for me.  But it was time to take a pause and acknowledge that I did it.  Not always gracefully, but I did it.  Thank you for following me through this.  It's comforting knowing that friends and family from near and far want to keep up with my journey.  Merry Christmas to you.  xo J



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

April Oncology Visit and Onward

The oncology visit last week went well as one can.  The pain under my left armpit is, tah dah!, from radiation!  Turns out my muscles under there are working like shoelaces now rather than rubber bands.  Thank you scar tissue.  Is it any wonder my mobility is reduced?  Still need to schedule PT for this but at least there's an answer. With regard to the A1C, I'm to ignore that result for now.  It's a 3 month look back, and guess who still had chemo running through her then?  Me.  I will reschedule the test for 3-6 months out and then we'll get serious about it if we need to be. The only shit news, and I appreciate the candor and honesty, is that there is NOTHING to do for my head hair.  It's still shedding, 17 weeks PFC, and it sucks.  I have a tiny bit of growth but it's random short hairs here and there.  I'm still treating it like lace and I am itching to REALLY wash it (scrub my scalp), blow dry it on full heat, and take a ...
Read more

Post Paris and Pre Infusion

Paris was, as you might imagine, heaven.  Bliss.  Totally grateful to have had the opportunity to travel with LDLF.  6 days of joy.  And back to reality.   Last week, I had an oncology massage at MGH.  It's in the same building as my radiation treatments but not in the basement.  Didn't matter.  I walked through the door and physically swayed from dizziness.  The PTSD is strong with me.  Went to the waiting room and again, was the youngest person there.  Spied the infusion rooms, gave another shudder, and after a little wait, headed back to meet my new BFF, the massage therapist.   When I think 'massage', I think 'spa'.  Nope.  An exam room in which you get a 'massage'.  However, it's not a normal massage AT ALL.  Instead, she worked to loosen the muscles which have shrunk: "Like if you put a chicken breast in the microwave, it shrinks.  That's what has happened to your shoulder and pec muscles."  ...
Read more

The Hill I'm Willing to Die on...

Flash back to October 2, 2024.  I'm getting my port in.  I'm on the surgical floor of MGH West in Waltham.  I am sedated, a medical professional makes 2 incisions, one where the port is placed in my right chest area and one where a tube is inserted into a vein in my neck.  You can see the tube over my collarbone.  It's been very effective, even though I hate it.  It's a constant reminder.   Flash back to yesterday.  I receive a call from Interventional Radiology to schedule my port removal.  I know from prior conversations with my medical oncologist that this procedure is done WHILE THE PATIENT IS AWAKE, WITH JUST LOCAL NUMBING AGENTS.  WTF?  No thank you.  The nurse explains that again yesterday and I say 'no'.  Nope.  You sedated me to put it in, and you will sedate me to take it out.  I will throw up if I feel anyone cut into me, or any tugging or pulling while it's being taken out.  I'm pretty ...
Read more