The chemo journey begins

Or should I say it began two days before my trip to Costa Rica in March unbeknownst to me. I promise to fill you all in on it another day when I’m not so tired, or should I say wired and will be very tired when I’m off of the Dexamethasone to help with chemo nausea. I truly believe that we are our own best advocates and knowledge is power which is one of the many reasons I’m sharing! 

One of my dearest friends Joanne suggested I write a blog to keep my many amazing friends and family in the loop and I have to be honest it’ll be easier for me to write one post as opposed to several. She also mentioned at how nice it was when my daughter Samantha blogged her cancer journey at age 24. After she suggested it, I went home and reread her whole blog. I laughed I cried and it brought back a flood of memories that I locked away, like the feeling of hopelessness and anxiety I had watching my sweet baby girl going through cancer. Shawn told me recently how he has that feeling of hopelessness watching me go through Metastatic breast cancer, yes that’s what I have lucky me eh! I honestly thought for some reason I would have been exempt being that I already have Rheumatoid Arthritis and have a heart condition that required fixing which left me with a weak heart. Like really???? Bad genes on both sides of the family!!! 

So today my day didn’t really start so great actually the last 3 days have been a whirlwind. I’m having my treatments at WCC “Walker Cancer Center” in St Catharines. Two days before chemo you need to have bloodwork, then the day before you see your oncologist to be sure your WBC is good enough for your treatment the next day. I will have all 6 cycles every 3 weeks on Wednesdays. If all goes well I should be done the chemo part the week before Christmas. I’m also being treated with immunotherapy during chemo and it will continue for a year. Sometime in January I believe I will also have approximately 19 rounds of radiation. Obviously being my first of six my counts were good enough, for my first session today. I arrive at the hospital for 6:45am to get a PICC line only to be told it was cancelled, um I need one to have treatment for 9am. I had virtually no sleep last night due to the Dexamethasone remember wired!!! So I was a bit of a grumpy bear and I must admit I was anxious, emotional very teary because it finally hit me that this is really happening. So needless to say no PICC line I had an IV for today, I started to cry which I never cry during this type of procedure. I was thinking about what the chemo did to my poor Samantha’s veins and if this is what would happen to me. Long story short because the chemo regimen was changed due to my weak heart the drug would be kinder to my veins. After having 3 different drugs with a flush in between, 5 hours later I’m done cycle 1 with only 5 more to go! Phew!!! 

Here’s a photo of me on day one,  I took the time to style it nice while I still have it LOL. I’m seriously hoping if I do have hair loss, I lose all the hair on my legs. There has to be some perks to having chemo right! LOL

Until next time, good night my friends