Round 5 *ding ding*

Round 5 can be summed up in two words: uneventful and over! I met with the doctor, she was pleased that I was feeling better and had a voice again. My counts were good, so I got hooked up. The nurses have me down to a routine now, so it's pretty easy. I was actually out by 3:15 today, which is the earliest I've ever been finished! In all, I'm feeling pretty good. Have to go back for my shot tomorrow, which changes things a bit, but I'm feeling like I'm getting much closer to the end.

I did have a nice conversation with one of the nurses about my hair situation. See, the hair on my head is growing. Not a lot, but it's prickly and there's enough that it sticks to my scarf or hat, so I've taken to just going bald. It honestly doesn't bother me the way I thought it would, but I'm careful to cover it if I'm going to be in the sun long. I really don't want to burn my dome! But I was also telling her that I still have to shave my legs, and she was totally with me about how unfair that is! I mean, that's supposed to be one of the few perks of chemo, right? Me and my body need to have a serious talk...

And Mom reminded me that I never posted the results of my PET scan! The first scan showed that the cells were metabolizing at a rate of 15-19 (what, I don't know) and the second scan showed that the metabolic rate dropped to 5. YAY! More good news showing that things are working. The only thing that I'm not thrilled about is a small nodule on my thyroid that wasn't present on the first scan. They seem to think it's a goiter, but my oncologist ordered some blood tests just to be on the safe side. She's not too concerned about it, so I'm going to try not to be, either.

Get Down with the Sickness

(I stole a page from Chrissy's book and used a song title for my post title... it's too fun not to!)

They warned me before I started treatments that it would be much harder to fight off a cold and they weren't kidding! I started feeling sick on St. Patrick's Day. Like sick sick. The week leading up to that, I was certain it was just allergies. Then we take Chase to get his hair cut, go out to breakfast, and by the time we get home, I've got a slight fever and my throat is killing me. So Chase and I kick back and have a lazy day of watching classic Disney movies (read: Mommy puts on the movies and falls asleep on the couch while he destroys the living room! It was pretty funny to watch him dancing to the songs from the Jungle Book, though.) By Tuesday, my voice is gone. Thursday morning comes and I'm still feeling awful (which is very unusual for me; usually 3 days, 5 tops, and I'm back to myself) so I call the doctor. They have me come in early for my bloodwork so that I can see the doctor. She tells me my throat is very inflamed but there aren't any signs of strep (yay!) and prescribes a Z-pack. Now, I've heard all about these Z-packs from friends and they're supposed to be A.M.A.Z.I.N.G! So I'm thinking this thing'll be gone by Saturday, Sunday at the very latest. Oh, guess who was wrong again?!? I literally had NO voice. To talk, I had to whisper and it was extremely painful. I had to call out from work on Monday, which I just hate doing, especially knowing that I'm going to be out Thursday and Friday for treatment. I was not missing Tuesday because we were going on a field trip to the Tarpon Springs Aquarium, so I had to whisper my instructions to my chaperones. When I woke up today, I just knew that my voice was back! I could feel the huge lump that had been in my throat was gone and the scratchiness was down to a minimum. I would've sang, but didn't want to wake up Chase! But it took 2 weeks to kick that cold. I do not want to go through that again, so guess who's going to be the hand-washing police at school? This lady right here!

Round 4 *ding ding* Ready yourself for some Bon Jovi...

WHOAAAAAAA we're halfway there! This song has been stuck in my head all day and that is completely okay with me because 1) I'm halfway through my chemo! and 2) who doesn't love Bon Jovi???

I started my day with my Thursday finger prick. I think I've been remiss and failed to mention that each and every Thursday, I go in and get stuck so they can check my blood levels. It's not like it's horribly painful or anything like that, but it does get pretty monotonous: "Hey, Jayme, what's your name and date of birth?" (Not kidding, they address me by name but then have to ask for my name!) Go sit down and wait to get called. Wait. Wait some more. Secretary calls back and reminds them that I'm here, so someone finally comes to get me (this is the only drawback of having the last appointment of the day: they think they're already done and forget about me!) Step on the scale. Cringe. Sit down. Review current medications. No, they have not changed in the 6 days since I last saw you. Take my blood pressure. Cringe (though actually, it's been really good lately!). Stick the thermometer in my hear. Ask for the reading because they never offer to tell you. Have my finger milked like a cow's udder. Here comes the stick; don't look! Always look at the last minute because that's how I roll. Have my finger milked some more, this time with blood coming out. Try not to stare. Fail miserably. Have a gauze square put on my finger, get handed my red folder and sent on my way. EVERY THURSDAY! (Sorry, I wasn't aware that that little rant was brewing, but it feels really good to get it out!)

I had a pretty brief meeting with the oncologist (this is routine before every chemo treatment). She showed me the lab reports from my CT scan and my tumor shrunk from over 9 1/2 cm to 5 cm! She said she was hoping for more so that I'd only have to do 6 treatments, but I had been planning on 8 from the beginning, so that wasn't too disheartening. She's ordered another PET scan after the 13th (gotta love insurance!) to see what kind of "reduction in activity" the chemo is causing and that will give us more information about how well it's working! Yay for all that! I did have to bring up the numbness I have in my fingertips. This is a pretty new thing and I just wanted to make her aware that it's happening. She told me that it's a side effect of the Vencristine (one of my chemo drugs) and that if it's still happening before the next treatment, she'll have to back down the dose or else the "neuropathy can become permanent." Yikes!

I am very happy to report that round 4 was uneventful. No contortions on my part today! They used a different needle (the 1 inch) to access my port. Going in was not as quick and easy as the pop-out kind because she has to push it in until she hits the back of the port, but we had absolutely NO problems today, so I'll take that every time! I absolutely love the nurses who work there! I had some really great conversations about crafting, birthday party planning (and found out that I'm not the only one who starts planning six or more months out!), and DMB. I made a ton of yo-yos for headbands and hair clips. I graded some papers, lesson planned, graphed some data. That is one good thing about the chemo: it makes me sit down and do things that I keep putting aside! 

Success!

As much as I don't like him, Dr. Barkley was able to exchange my stent out! This was a huge relief since his last attempt had me stuck in the hospital for 5 days. This time, I was in and out in less than 5 hours! And now that it's done, I can confess how extremely nervous I really was. Those of you who know me know how superstitious I tend to be. There were so many parallels between the first procedure and this one: the doctor scheduling me first so I can get out early, an important get-together that weekend that I did not want to miss (the first time-Brennin's first birthday party, this time-Patricia and Eric's engagement party), not to mention that it was going to be on Friday the 2nd again. I had myself pretty much convinced that he wasn't going to be able to change it out and I had a plan: I was refusing the second surgery that gave me the nephrostomy tube and had me sitting around all weekend waiting for the right doctors to work their Monday-Friday hours. I was going home. I would come back on Monday and they could do whatever they needed to do, but I flat out refused to sit around the hospital all weekend! I had myself so worked up for this fight, so as I was coming out of anesthesia, the first thing I asked the nurse was, "Did it work?" She looked at me like I was a little crazy (probably because my articulation sounded more like "Di-iwor?") so I said in my slowest, clearest post-anesthesia voice, "Is the stent in?" She said, "Oh, yeah! He changed it out in less than 10 minutes." And then I fell back asleep. Some fighter I turned out to be!

So after finishing my post-op and getting released, I come home to drink 2 huge bottles of banana flavored barium sulfate. At first, it's like drinking a banana Slurpee that's separated (trust me, I know my banana Slurpees!) After the second glass, though, it's like drinking wet chalk that someone tried to flavor. Each bottle gave me 3 glasses, so you can probably guess what it was like by the end. Anyway, it could've been flavored like (insert the grossest thing you can think of here) and I still would've chugged it because it was the contrast for my CT scan! The scan went pretty smoothly and I am anxiously waiting for Thursday when I get my results! I have a good feeling about it, though, because of the success of the stent exchange. Now to just wait and try to be patient...

Urologist (No, MYologist!)

I've got to preface this with the following information: I count this doctor in the same category as Dr. Umstead. Consider yourself warned!

I had to call the urologist, Dr. Barkley, because the stent he put in (or tried to put in then had to have someone else do it four days later...) was only good for 2-3 months. Finally got an appointment with him on Monday afternoon at 3:45. I'm finally taken back at 4:15. After the preliminary stuff with the nurse, she puts me in a room. The whole time I'm in there, I can hear him talking to someone about his plans for next weekend, laughing, joking, the whole deal. At 4:55 (yes, 40 minutes after I was put in a room) he finally comes in and tells me to fill him in on what's happened since he last saw me. So I tell him. Mind you, all of this information is in all of the many pages of paperwork that I was required to come in early to fill out. He was surprised to hear that I was going through chemo and interrupted with "Are you septic?" I swear to you, I am not joking. The man asked me if I was septic. It took quite a bit of self-control not to reply with some sarcastic comment about being a total idiot and exposing the people who work for him to my toxicity. Ugh.... Anyway, he goes "Well, we're going to schedule an appointment for you to go to the hospital so we can take out the stent that's in there and put in a new one" then gets up to walk out the door a whopping 3 minutes after he came in the room. Whoa, there, buddy, I've got some questions for you! Is it inpatient or outpatient? Am I going under? Do I even need a new stent put in? I mean, you never even looked at me, so maybe the tumor's shrunk enough that I don't need one anymore. And I have a CT scan scheduled for Friday afternoon. Will I be out in time? Or am I going to get stuck in the hospital for five days again because you can't seem to figure out how to get it in? Oh, and how about the horrid pain that I have when I empty my bladder? I'm not even kidding you, by the time I caught him, we were standing in the hallway. He tells me it's outpatient, he'll schedule me first so I should be able to do the CT scan, hopefully I won't have to stay this time, and the pain is from the stent, there's nothing he can do about it. That's it.

So let me just tell you how thrilled I am about this whole situation. I mean, I know that it needs to be done. Friday will be 3 months to the day since I had the first one put in. The last thing I need is to start developing stones around the old one (which is what I was told could happen). If I had more time to play with, I would definitely be shopping around for a different urologist. At this point, though, it really needs to be done, the sooner, the better. I'm just hoping for an easier time this go-round and then the possibility of never having to deal with this guy again...

Round 3 *ding ding*

So, it's been a while since I've been on here because I've been spending every second I could making up for lost time with Chase. Aside from that, things have been pretty uneventful, which has been nice.

Round 3 started off pretty uneventfully. I met with the doctor who said things seemed to be going really well so far. She got me scheduled for a CT scan on March 2 so we can see how the tumor is responding to the chemo. Not going to lie: I'm very excited to know how things are going, but pretty nervous at the same time. After my time with her, I went over to the infusion suite and got all hooked up. It was kind of weird because it was the first time that I was there by myself. I sent Chris to Disney to get some pins that were coming out that he really wanted. It might sound terrible, but it was kind of nice to be there by myself. One of my first meds is Benadryl, so I was able to take a really good nap! Then, I spent some time talking with other patients. I usually don't do that because I'm talking with him. I met quite a few people who were on their last treatment, which was really great to hear! And everyone is just so supportive of everyone else. It's really a great feeling.

Chris came by with lunch on his way back from Disney. Not going to lie: once he got there, I realized that I missed him being there! We ate lunch together, looked through the pins he got and the pins he traded for, and just spent some nice time together.

The really fun part came when it was time for my adriamycin push. For some reason, they weren't getting a blood return from my port. I ended up with two nurses trying to get a return. They had me turning my head, stretching my neck, positioning my arms in all kinds of crazy ways, and nothing! They said that since I'm young, my body may be healing around the port. They said it's an easy fix: just go to the hospital and get some anti-clotting medicine injected into the port. Said it pretty much works like Drain-O (though that's not something I'll be trying anytime soon!) One of the nurses had one last idea: stand up, hunch my shoulders forward, put my head down, and have the other nurse press on the port. Not going to lie: it was not a very comfortable position, but when they were able to get a return, I was NOT about to move! I stood in that position for about 15 minutes while they pushed the adriamycin in. It was actually quite comical:

Friday I went back and got my Neulasta shot, which I have to say is worse than the chemo. The actual shot isn't bad, just a quick injection in my stomach, but the shot stimulates my bone marrow to start making more white cells and it makes me incredible achy. Tylenol helps, but I feel like I move really slowly. We brought Chase with us for the shot because we're usually in and out in a few minutes. Everyone made such a fuss over him! They gave him a car, a balloon, a lollipop... He's going to want to go every time if they keep this up!

Generosity

I can not believe how generous everyone has been through this process. The hat party was amazing in itself, but Corinne Young put together a fundraiser for me to help me pay for my treatments. Today she presented me with all of the cards and donations. I was overwhelmed when she told me the total: $4,000! That takes care of my next two treatments! It is such a relief to have one less thing to worry about. I am just so incredibly thankful to have such wonderful, caring people in my life. Thank you all!!!