One thing I have discovered in the course of cancer treatment is that you can order all your groceries online and then drive there and sit in a special parking space and they will bring them out for you and load them into your car. This has possibly changed my life forever. It costs $4.95 but I probably save that just by avoiding the impulse buys that come from wandering around a grocery store. Amazing!

The second week of chemo was pretty much like the first. Friday is the worst day and it gets worse as the day goes on, both physically (fatigue, spaciness) and emotionally. I think a lot of that is to do with the comedown from steroids that are given with my chemo drugs. By Saturday I am more alert, though, and then back to almost normal by Sunday. I hope this pattern continues!  I still need to look out for neuropathy, but so far I haven't experienced any of that.

I'm going to have a port put in next week. My arms are already bruised and 10 more IV weeks plus a year of herceptin just did not sound fun. The port is a little circular device that sits under the skin on my upper chest and connects directly to a vein, so that in order to draw blood or administer meds they just stick a tiny needle directly into it and supposedly this does not hurt. I think it will be a lot easier, especially because the IVs being in my left arm has meant I can't really use my dominant hand at all during chemo.

In other news, Banana has had five seizures this month. We have doubled his Keppra but are probably going to have to add another med. It's pretty crazy how we are taking this in stride now, though: oh well, it's just an epileptic cat!

Chemo 1

I guess this is for real now, as I am 2 days out from the first chemotherapy and starting to feel it. Stupid cancer.

My drugs are indeed taxol and herceptin. I also get benadryl and dexamethasone before they start the chemo drugs, in order to prevent reactions. I've read a lot of horror stories on message boards about people not sleeping at all for days due to the dexamethasone, but I had no trouble at all. I've been sort of fascinated by how well I've been sleeping through the whole thing, considering how much trouble I've historically had with sleep, but I guess my trazodone is doing its job.

The chemo drugs themselves took 3.5 hours to get in my body. I had a small reaction to the taxol, which can cause chest pain and shortness of breath in some people the first time (for me it was just a little chest tightness), so they slowed it to a 2 hour infusion and that was fine. The next time they'll do 2 hours again, and then speed it back up to 1 hour from thereon out. The herceptin was 90 minutes. I was there a long time, all told, because they first have to do bloodwork and I also saw the doctor and all that. I don't really mind, though - I can read or watch Netflix on my Kindle, etc., and the time passed pretty quickly. They bring around a cart with sandwiches! I got a pb&j.

Last night my skin started hurting, kind of like when you have the flu. And this morning I am weirdly jittery. My oncologist responds instantly to emails - seriously, within minutes - and told me to take ibuprofen and that both things are related to the taxol and will pass pretty quickly. It's kind of annoying how they can't tell you exactly what will happen to you, since everyone is different, but it's nice that he is so responsive and calmly tells me what I can do about things when they do happen.

One thing I learned via the internet is that taxol makes your nails really sensitive to light, and that one of the best ways to protect them in order to hopefully prevent nail loss is to paint your fingernails and toenails black. So that will be cheery for springtime, black fingernails for the next 3 months! I'm kind of digging it for the time being, though, I have to admit.

Next up: Drugs

Finally, finally, I start chemo on Wednesday. I've felt safer googling stuff lately and as a result of that I'm pretty sure my chemo is going to be a drug called taxol, once a week for 12 weeks, given concurrently with herceptin every 3 weeks, and then of course the herceptin will continue for another 9 months. Taxol given weekly seems to have very moderate side effects compared with other chemo drugs - some people don't even lose their hair, or at least not all of it. Regardless, I did this last week and I'm happy with it:

I also have a wig to wear to work but I think most of the time I'll just be bald or wear a hat.

The statistics for my type of cancer are all over the place, and I can either freak myself out or feel very reassured by what I read, depending on the source. The her2 positivity made it a very bad thing before the development of herceptin, so the older sources say that it recurs at much higher rates than her2 negative cancers. [I should say that "very bad" is still not actually all that bad, given that it's cancer. It's like 80% chance of no recurrence vs. 90%+ with other types. I feel Ben would want me to make this clear since I seem to be prone to catastrophizing and he is constantly having to bring up how "terrible" does not actually mean what I seem to feel like it means sometimes.] Neverthless, most sources seem to think that herceptin has leveled the playing field, that this drug has been a complete game changer, and that many oncologists are now of the mind that her2+ is a good thing, because the targeted therapy is so good.

Still, I'm just me, and nobody knows what's going to happen, and that's scary. We're hanging in there, though, doing regular stuff and being regular people. What else can you do? I still have a lot of books to read and TV shows to watch, after all.