It's all good!

Alrighty! Thought I'd give a bit of an update.

Chemo last night went great, no problems at all. They agreed to reduce the Decadron from the normal protocol of 25 down to 10, so I was happy about that. I got Emend and Zofran for nausea, and I'm still feeling pretty good. I've got that chemo hangover/indescribable yuck feeling, but that's familiar territory. I'm to expect to start feeling worse as the day wears on, so early this morning I decided to just get up and stay up after my 5:00 a.m. vitals were checked. I figured I could watch the sunrise and enjoy feeling better while I could -- and catch up on my sleep when I started to feel badly.

My chemo agenda is as follows: Last night I had Etoposide for 2 hours. Today I'll have Etoposide for 2 hours, Carboplatin for 1 hour, and Ifosfamide and Mesna for 24 hours. Possible side effects include: nausea; vomiting; hair loss (mine started coming out on Saturday, so I'm hoping just to make it to the weekend so we can shave it at home -- but we packed the shaving kit just in case); skin rashes, diarrhea or constipation (I've got the latter and they've begun to treat it but are ramping up the dosages today because I need it); mouth ulcers; tingling sensations in hands and feet (neuropathy); fluid retention, darkened skin (this could manifest weeks from now -- sounds kind of like Bleo scars!); bladder toxicity and possible bloody urine (I had the bloody urine last time, but I also had the beginnings of a period that the chemo chased away, so it's impossible to tell what caused the presence of blood); drowsiness, feeling tired, and weakness (I had that a lot even with the mini-ICE); confusion (sure, like I'd notice that! Ha!) Pre-meds before the chemo are Decadron and Zofran, both antiemetics, and both drips.

I'm waiting now for the doctors' rotation. I don't know when they plan on hooking me back up for today's chemo. They leave my port accessed and then just plug me in! The nurses are extremely good, and I feel that I'm in very caring and capable hands. Yesterday I met with Dr. Kaufman, who's on my transplant team; he's overseeing this round of ICE. He was accessible, kind, extremely nice, well-informed, and responsive to my input and feedback. I also met with Don the Pharmacist (everyone says it like that so that's what I call him) -- he's a bigtime talker, but also expert and clearly receptive to my input, insofar as he reduced my decadron intake by less than half. Another new transplant friend is the dietician, Tiffany, who checked in with me to talk about my swallowing difficulties and reflux woes resulting from my childhood lye-ingestion.

So I'm doing just great, overall! So far, so good. Lorraine is at work now, but then is coming back here to spend a few hours with me. I miss her! And the kids!! I wish we could have called a family meeting and just explained that Mommy was going away but would be back so not to worry....but even if we could have gathered them all in one spot, some feline somebody would be yacking up something and then Louie would be rushing over there to eat it....so I don't think the meeting would yield much understanding, really. *sigh* Pets. What are you going to do besides love and worry and love some more?

I'll post more tonight or tomorrow. Ooooh!!!

BRENDA AND GRETCHEN: ARE YOU GETTING MY EMAILS? Please reply with a comment here, ok? I'm worried that my hotmail email addy is getting caught up by your spamblockers or something. Let me know!