First Chemo

January 10, 2020.

I cried when we scheduled this day. It was New Year’s Eve and my oncologist (still sounds so weird) called me to discuss the results of the tests from the previous Friday. The Friday that was my 38th birthday and a harrowing experience of inconclusive tests and vacillating between stage 2 and 4 cancer and ended with a bottle of wine for dinner. Mercifully the test results yielded good things. She explained this meant I was back at stage 2 and so a concrete plan could be developed.

I always knew the plan would involve chemotherapy but having a date on the calendar made it real. Once things are on my calendar they are happening. The calendar is how I control my life. But having chemo on my calendar was out of my control.

The early January days ticked by while my anxiety crescendoed.

In the middle of the week before chemotherapy I had to have a port placed under my skin. I felt like another piece of me was being whittled off to this treatment plan I never wanted and it was a tearful day.

Fortunately we had evening plans.

I have decided to try cold capping to keep my hair (a topic deserving of another post entirely) and my friends were headed over to learn how this cold capping is to be done.

Since my diagnosis and my expression of interest in cold capping among my friends, multiple folks told me about a local friend-of-a-friend who was successful in keeping her hair recently by using these caps. My doctors put me in touch with someone as well (with her permission, HIPAA hawks) and it turns out everyone had been speaking of the same person!

I reached out to this lovely woman and she and her husband spent two hours teaching a small course in cold capping in my dining room two nights before my first chemo. It was a beautiful act of kindness from two strangers who took it upon themselves to use their experience to help someone else facing the same beast.

It made my port-day easier and gave me the confidence to head into my first chemo with a plan.

The plans were laid and the day came, despite my best efforts to linger on January 9 indefinitely.

My first chemo was scheduled for 8am so we left at 6:15 to arrive at the hospital by 7:00 so we could have an entire hour to cold cap before I even started my pre-meds. Pre-meds are the steroids and anti-nausea medication they give you before the actual chemo drip begins. For me they also include anti-anxiety medication, because obviously.

I drove so Terry could manage the timing of getting the caps cold. I sipped my coffee and chatted with Becky just like any other day. Tail lights blurred in the downpour as the wipers whisked the rain away from the windshield. The normalcy of the drive seemed off. We were headed to chemotherapy, MY chemotherapy, and commuters swerved in and out of lanes as if everything was right with the world.

We arrived at the hospital before the Infusion center even opened and met my friends who would help me save my hair and witness the hardest day of my life. Fortunately, the cold capping provided a welcome distraction.

RBG mentoring me on how to beat cancer like a Supreme boss

We were ushered back to the room where I would get my first chemo and my frozen head had not managed to cool my anxiety. Every nerve in my body wanted to be alert to the unnatural setting it had been thrust into unwillingly. My nurse would have had to peel me off of the ceiling to administer the chemotherapy had it not been for the anti anxiety medication.

By the time he brought in the main event, the chemotherapy medication nicknamed the “red devil” by all those who have had the displeasure of its encounter, I was high as a flying kite in Mary Poppins land.

After chemo is over I think most people take long naps. The additional drugs administered to reduce the harsh chemotherapy side effects leave you incredibly fatigued. But I couldn’t nap for more than a few minutes at a time with the cold cap changing schedules. With the type of chemo that I am currently on, due to how harsh it is, I have to continue to freeze my head for five hours after the actual chemo drip ends. My friends followed me home and helped change my cap for the remaining five hours and then we had a nice long nap.

Looking like Baby Yoda

My big kids arrived home. My friends dropped off dinner and my sweet little Penny Lane. A good friend will watch your baby for the day while you have chemo but a GREAT friend will deliver your baby freshly bathed back home all clean and ready to snuggle.

After the day, the chemo, ALL the capping, having dinner, and snuggling my baby Penny Lane, I felt like I got sucker punched and then shot with an elephant tranquilizer.

But I made it.

One of sixteen chemotherapy sessions is over and I have fifteen to go.

Now for all the naps and baby snuggles until work on Monday.