The Chemo – Days 2 & 3

Day 2 was largely uneventful, which is good! Lisa and my mom are switching off days at the hospital so Tuesday was my mom’s (Carroll) day to come with me to my chemo appointment.

There were two small annoyances I had to deal with though. First, I had to get a new IV. This is annoying because I intentionally saved the IV from Monday. It was irritating to sleep with that night and then I couldn’t get it wet the next morning and had to take a bath instead of a shower. When the nurse attempted to inject some saline Tuesday morning it hurt pretty badly. Thus, they started a new IV in my left arm (previous IV was on the right). I’m getting IVs everyday because the ports are even more annoying to deal with. And really, I only have 21 days of infusion so I shouldn’t be completely full of track marks like a junkie at the end of these 9 weeks.

The second minor annoyance is that we stayed longer than needed because the nurse had too many patients. There are 60 chairs for chemo patients at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center and they were completely full yesterday. Basically, I’d finish one IV bag and the nurse was too busy to swap out the old bag for a new bag and we didn’t leave until around 4:30. Once we got home I finally got to take a nice 40 minute nap in my new recliner though, it was great!

Today, Wednesday, is chemo day 3 and it was Lisa’s turn to accompany me to my appointment. Man oh man did the fatigue hit me hard today. I was super groggy getting out of bed and the tiredness didn’t really let up until the afternoon. I even took an hour and a half nap in the morning at the infusion center!

I had another nice foot massage in the afternoon, ate some lunch, and then felt like I finally had some energy right as my appointment was done for the day. We finished infusion around 2:30, so we finally had time to get to AAA to and pickup my Disabled Persons Parking Placard! This will allow us to park for free at the Moores Cancer Center valet! And yes, our hospital has a valet, only in California!

We made it home around 4pm and I crashed hard again for about an hour in yep, you guess it – my fancy recliner. Then the me and the fam walked to check out the new Target in North Park! Lisa is SUPER EXCITED to be able to walk to Target from our house! It’s smaller than a full blown Target, but has just enough essentials when you’re in a pinch. I’m sure we will be taking many more trips to this Target in the future!

Finally, our friend Nancy stopped by to drop off another delicious whole 30 meal and visit for a bit. It’s been really encouraging to have so many people rally around our family during this challenging time and we greatly appreciate everything that you all have done for us. I can’t thank you enough. My heart is full from the overwhelming generosity of our community, both near and far. YOU ARE THE BEST!!!

Anyways, I feel like I’m rambling more in this post than the past few, so I’ll wrap things up. I hope to post soon about my diagnosis and also the chemo regimen I’m on so keep an eye out for those posts soon. Oh, and make sure to click on the follow button to get email updates when I post!

-B