First Round down............Aug.31, 2011

The first round of chemo is out of the way....... only 7 more to go.
I was a bit unsure how i was going to react, of course i have heard how everyone else has done, so I went into it with a very positive attitude, well lets see, it seemed the average person I have either spoken to or have heard about has had no reaction or the meds have helped them so well they have had no nausea, no aches a little tired here & there, but otherwise no reaction. So while again I went into it with the glass is half full attitude, I got to be honest i had my doubts.
I mean lets look at all the odds, my lump was found & came back at first likely to be cancer, but not definite, looked like I had maybe 3 lymphnodes? ended up with 8, only a 10% chance to be BRACA1 positive & I am, I've had a hemotoma on my hand from the IV that nurse candy cane thought was fine, 2 blown veins from blood work. On the other hand the CT, & Pet scans all came back good. So maybe chemo won't be so bad......ehhhh, Nope not so much.
It started out OK, as i had said in the previous post, i felt pretty good afterward. Went to lunch, was tired but not  knocked out. took a nap slept good. Got Up the next day & felt great, went over to the store, ran errands. I was like wow this is nothing........then it all started, That afternoon we had an earthquake, & I felt it! An F'ing earthquake in NJ? Talk about a WTF moment, I was watching as the hallmark stores windows actually buckled (never broke) but it was wild.
Then on Wednesday I had a slight headache but i had to go back to the Dr. for the Nuelasta shot, this boosts the bone marrow & helps keep the white cell count up, its a time released drug so it works over a 6 day period, its side effects are achy bones & can make you a bit tired. I told him about the headache & that Tylenol was barely touching it, so he prescribed hyrdocodone so if i had the achy bones & a headache this will help both, Well that day about 4:00 i hit the wall, It sort of felt like I had the flu, not bad but just the start I ate small amounts of things like, peanut butter crackers, pastina soup. Forcing myself to eat, because now I needed to take the hydra & wasn't doing that on an empty stomach that for sure would have made me sick. It really only knocked me out, & caused terrible heart burn. Now I was eating tums like crazy. (good thing they're good for you).
Thursday was like an out of body experience, I never felt like myself still had the headache & my body was throbbing. Took 1/2 a day at the store then lots of naps.
Friday was worse yet, now I have a full blown migraine, achy bones, throbbing body & can't even get up. Oh & there's a hurricane on the way!
So call the Dr. he calls in a script for Fiorcet, for migraines & it has codine. I send Joe to pick it up, add some more peanut butter crackers, saltines, OJ, cranapple juice and Advil just for good measure. By the time the script was actually ready, he came home w/ it, the crackers & a bad generic OJ i could not drink. That's all that was left, apparently we were in an Apocalypse & no one told us?
Mom came to stay w/ us for the 2 days so she wouldn't end up like Dorothy from the wizard of OZ at her house, this also gave her the opportunity to help take care of me, even though she did not want to stay & would escape when the pills would kick in & I'd pass out for a few hours.
As it turned out Irene was really a lot of rain & strong winds for us. Our neighbor lost a big oak, but nothing was damaged & we never even lost power. Thank God (make the sign of the cross, here ). It didn't matter much to me anyway those pills knocked me out till pretty much Sunday!
I got better each day, Monday went back to the Dr, my white cells are excellent, & he feels i had a bad reaction to the Nuelasta, that this caused the headaches. So my next treatment that will be on Wednesday Sept. 7th i will get a self injecting shot of Nupogin. I will give this to myself over the next 6 days but if I feel the migraines start I'm to stop it. Then we'll test my cells & see how i do.
I just love all the testing & we'll see how you do's.......but i guess that's why its called making strides.
Mom, Me & Lisa also went wig shopping on Monday, i got 3 wigs I will post pics with all my new do's after the hair falls out. I gotta keep you waiting to see something ................my new nick name might just be
"Blonde Rapper TLP"
As of today Wednesday August 31st, I finally feel like myself. Still leery of certain foods. So, as my friend Gabe said this week "Table anything that might be a favorite, You don't want to NOT want something you love when this is all over" Good point, cause crabs & spags is my second favorite meal & just Joe mentioning making it, doesn't sound the least bit good. So I'll wait till this over to have that again!
Keep fingers & anything else crossed next week works out better.
Love all the prayers, thoughts & keep the comments coming.
xoxo