1 down, 7 to go

It's official, the first round of chemo has been administered successfully. I feel pretty good all things considered. A little queasy and sweaty (it's hot here) but really, since I've been on so many pain meds for the fluid retention and surgical pain, it isn't fazing me too badly. I met a couple of really nice women in the treatment room, watched old videos of Ryan on our portable DVD player, and listened to the new Ali Farka Toure cd my excellent husband bought for me. We saw Dr. Yen before the treatment began so he could go over my finger stick/blood counts, examine me, and make sure I was fit to poison. He said I was good to go, so I sat in my lay-z-boy and took those toxic chemicals like a good girl. I know some of you might think that's terrible but dark humor is of great comfort to me-especially right now. Sometimes the only way I can maintain my positivity is by being a little caustic. It keeps me from biting everyone's heads off. And I have been told that you just get more irritable throughout treatment, especially since chemo usually throws you into early menopause, so I apologize in advance for any offenses.

Really though, positivity hasn't really been an issue for me. Sure I have my moments, but if you're reading this blog, you probably know me and realize I'm typically an optimistic and hopeful kind of girl. And I do have faith and believe that I am going to get through all this (after a dark and difficult road ;), but when I'm in pain, it's difficult to maintain any positivity. Having said that, it's been kind of a rough week. My port installation went fine but my shoulder was barking like a pack o' hounds. So badly that it sent me back to the surgeon to make sure nothing on the hardware of the port had migrated. If you want to see a picture of what a port looks like, go to this link:

http://www.bardaccess.com/port-arterial.php

So the doctor decided to perform an immediate ultrasound and then sent me across the street to the surgical center to get a chest xray. By the time I took the xray & walked back across the street to his office, the digital xrays were up on his computer monitor. So cool! Everything looked fine, I could see the port under the skin and the catheter that was threaded all they way through the vein, and after talking for a while about what I was doing for the pain, he determined I need to take more drugs...Go figure! The problem is that I'm a lightweight when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs so I tend to take less than the suggested dose. However, I'm learning that pain is a funny thing. If you stay on top of it, you can usually manage it better than if you let it go too long and try to "catch up" to it. So anyways, I was skipping my mid-day dose and was just kinda trying to ride on the coattail of my morning dose, and then taking one before bed. Apparently that wasn't such a good idea. I know now. They also say with chemo to take the anti-nausea meds even if I'm not feeling nauseous so any nausea can get nipped in the bud before it bothers me. The thing is, with the pain meds, it's hard for me to feel so out of it and foggy. I'm trying to feel as normal as possible, be Ryan's mom and Howie's wife on top of all this, and I feel like such a zombie when I'm on em. Having said that though, I realize I need to maybe meet them halfway on this one because when I'm in pain, I'm not myself. And if you're not yourself, you're really not there in the first place. So cliche, so sorry. So anyways, I'm going to try and be a good girl and take my medicine. And really, I saw the surgeon on Tuesday and the port feels significantly better yesterday and today. Well at least it did until they stuck a giant needle in to administer the chemo. But I am being prescribed a topical numbing medicine to help for next time, so I'm looking forward to that. As long as everything lines up and I don't have any adverse reactions, my blood counts look good, and I'm not sick, next time will be 3 Thursdays from today.

I'm off to rest and try take a pill. Thanks for reading and commenting and for being out there for me/us. My love follows you all.

Oh, be sure to check our our Puggle Jojo in her diaper & collar (which she only wears when she's inside and has free reign of the house). Poor girl, she's so over it! But then again, so are we!