Chemo #2

Some of the lovely gifts from the Wiggin' Out Party - THANK YOU!!

Last week was my second chemo and although it went better than the first one, I still got sick, but I'm learning tricks of the trade...for example, the white blood cell shot I get the day after chemo gives you massive amounts of bone pain, but taking Claratin for three days around that helps! Who knew! The day before chemo my co-workers hosted a wiggin' out part for me and decorated my head with scarves, hats and wigs...here are a few of them. I'm still learning how to tie scarves, how to rock the chic cancer bad-ass look, but so far...I'm loving he options! It was a great supportive way to go into the second dose of chemo.

Chemo this time around involved more trips to urgent care for fluids and meds; I'm more tired than anything this go around, but they tell me that is the dead cells getting flushed out of my body. My friend Christina came with me to chemo this time. I was nice to have a positive face to sit with me post conversation with my oncologist. He's serious, and hope doesn't seem to be a part of his vocabulary.  Is it too much to ask for a doctor to at least offer hope? I'm not expecting you to make everything perfect, but I simply want someone to say we're hoping for the best and we will fight together. I continue to be thankful for my tribe - family, friends, nurses - who fight along side me when doctors don't see to have that attitude. He's not a bad man; he's young with little bedside manner and less time to have experienced miracles. I'm bent on being a miracle case just to prove him wrong - that science and medicine do have limits, and meditation and faith know no bounds! Pretty sure we'll be having a conversation about hope in my next appointment...bring it on serious, oncologist man! :)

The weekend and today were rough. I started out feeling better, but then slowly progressed into nausea and dry heaves, and pain all over. The worst...I thought it would be a good idea to lay on the floor in some very basic restorative yoga poses....I guess when your body has been fighting you for about 3 months, laying on the floor hurts your bones! But at least I could laugh....yoga will solely happen on the comfort of my soft bed until further notice. :)

And the good news, my specialist and oncologist here have decided that we'll do 6 doses of doxorubicin (the lifetime max.), then I'll get a break from chemo...it could be anywhere from three months to a year depending on how it goes. They say we keep monitoring it of course then, but I'm thinking I'll keep fighting then with more natural methods. I'm still researching, but there are options. So watch out world, come October this girl is getting a chemo break!!

But magical moments continue to happen. Somehow in spite of cancer, I feel bolder, more confident, more optimistic than ever and I'm pretty sure things are going to work out beautifully!

Thank you for all the positive thoughts and well wishes through the second dose of chemo. Now for a little down time until the end of the month when I'll have a CT scan and head back to OHSU for a follow-up. We're praying the tumors will have shrunk, or at the very least not grown. I'm not so secretly praying for clear scans...#eff you cancer!