Round 2 Day 1

Same as for first round, we went out to one of my favorite restaurants the night before chemo.  My father in law was nice enough to babysit, and then stay overnight so he could help with our daughter in the morning since we had to leave for infusion center before 6:30am.  The place I picked was Magic Lamp, a Lebanese restaurant in 2nd St.  The steak and chicken kabobs with garlic sauce were delicious as usual, and the company was great.  I even had a glass of wine!

On Monday morning we hurried out the door and I forgot the numbing cream that I was supposed to use on the port area to reduce pain when they access the port (it's called Emla cream, and it is available via prescription).  I figured since I was OK without it the first time it wasn't worth turning the car around!  Once we got to the infusion center, I was weighed, temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate were checked.  Next my port was accessed, it was flushed with saline solution to make sure there were no obstructions, then they drew blood.  After a couple of minutes, we got the printouts showing my white blood counts had gone down (but were still high in the normal range - thanks to neulasta again!), and my platelets went up from last time (yay, eating more meat probably helped that!). The doctor later explained that since I had I had tolerated the first round so well, we would follow the dose adjusting part of the protocol and most of the chemo drugs (except for vincristine and prednisone) would be raised in dose by 20% for this round.  We agreed with that, ready to kick this cancer's butt!

We started around 8am, and left about 2pm - after getting anti-nausea meds, Benadryl, and hen hours of Rituximap (which is just once per round so it's not in my pump).  Finally, the nurse installed the pump I'll get to carry for the next of the week, and we were sent on our way.  I got to nap for abut at home, then decided I felt well enough to go see my husband and friends play softball.  I'm unsure whether they won or lost the game, but my daughter had a great time playing with the other kids, as usual.  I got to sit on a comfy beach chair our good friends dragged to the park, and am very thankful of the other adults that did the running around after the kids (that's been my job before, and it is quite tiring!).  Afterwards I felt well enough to join the team at pizza, I think that's the first time since all this craziness started in May.  After getting home I got to catch up on all your awesome messages of support, thank you!

I just realized I didn't even mention that I'm almost completely bald now!  Here's another picture update, I'm hoping the eyebrows and lashes will stay for a bit longer.  If not, I'm ready to fake them with makeup thanks to a youtube site/blogger that my cousin told me about (it is written by a young woman with alopecia, if you're going through hairless too, chech out eyelineher.blogspot.com).  I got a ton of compliments on FB already (thanks!!!!!) and it honestly feels better to go bald than to wear hats or anything else on my head right now. I do wear a hat if I'm outside and not in shade, since I'm trying to be very careful of the Sun exposure on my extra-sensitive chemo skin.

Tomorrow, and every day this week until Friday, we will need to get the empty pump bag changed out for a new one. On Friday they will take out the pump, and then I will have only 4 more rounds to go! :)