Nine Down and One to Go

I went to chemo with the holiday spirit donning my pirate/gypsy costume (it was questionable). Got a few laughs. Had the picc line put in first. The actual procedure didn't take too long. Once they brought me in. The technician said the hold up was waiting for the nurses to do the paper work. I can believe it because Luke and I were waiting close enough to hear them discuss a fundraiser raffle for some time and various other non-work related topics when they were supposed to be entering my info in the computer. Finally the tech came and asked if the paper work was done and said he was taking me anyway.

The procedure is done under a local anesthetic using the ultrasound machine to guide the catheter through my vein and up into my heart. Now I'll have a tube coming out of my arm for the next three weeks. But that's not so long. I have to go back each Monday so they can flush it out and make sure I don't get any clots.

Then we saw the onc. My labs were much better. He said not to be surprised if I needed to have another blood transfusion as this chemo seems to make me really anemic. He doesn't want to stop, though, because I have "such advanced cancer."

When I went for the chemo it all went well with the picc line. I met a woman there from Harvey who was displaced by Katrina. She has ovarian cancer and has really had the problems with chemo. Starting with 9 months of chemo treatment only to learn that not only was her cancer not responding to the treatment, but she actually had a new tumor grow in her spleen. All this while she had a lot of nausea and allergic reactions to the treatment. I felt way ahead of the game after talking to her.

Only time will tell how it'll go this time. Maybe it won't be so bad. I asked the onc before if there was something I should be eating or doing (besides the aranasp shot) to deal with the anemia. He said, no not really.

With my costume today I wore three special things around my neck. One was a "pearl" necklace that was my mother's. She died when I was 16 so it was sort of a plea to my ancestors to help me out and give me strength. The second was a St. Peregrine Medal, the patron saint of cancer patients. This was a gift from a friend. And the last was a medicine bag with three pebbles in it with the words, "peace," "love" and "believe" written on them. This was a gift from my sister, Sharon. It was a kind of pay it forward thing as it was originally a gift from her friend in New Mexico to her when she was going through a bad time. When she got it there were only two pebbles, but she added the "believe" one when she gave it to me.

I was ready for Trick-or-Treaters tonight and wouldn't you know after many weeks of no rain the sky opened up with hard rain and lightening and thunder. I don't know what to do with this candy!