Yesterday, Monday, was a long busy day. We started with an early lunch at Olive Garden with our neighbors, Pat and Dwayn. What a deal. For $6.95 you get all you can eat soup, salad and bread sticks. Sure beats fast food for about the same price and you are served and there are tablecloths.
1:15 met with Dr Banghar to review treatment. He said the bone scan showed no cancer just changes that we all experience as we age. He said there is no point in sticking needles in all those little spots, just to check. Then on to chemo area. Nicole, my nurse, inserted a needle attached to an IV tubing into the port on my chest. First was an anti-nauseau medicine then a steroid for the same thing. Then a "push" of Mitomycin which she pushed into the IV line from a very large syringe along with a flush solution, I assume saline, to make sure all the medicine gets in my body. They had told me I would have a pump for the next four days to put the 5-FU into my system. Silly me, I thought this would be something small attached to the port. Oh no, about 4 1/2' of IV tubing is attached to the pump and a bag of the 5-FU which is held in a bag with a shoulder strap, this total contraption is about 6" x 5" x 3". This stays with me until 2:00 Friday and it is somewhat of a pain remembering to pick it up and carry it with me whenever I want to move. Also, no showers until Fri, just sponge baths and hair washing in sink. I will try to stay as sweet smelling as possible.
We had four hours to kill until the next appointment so we made a couple of stops and decided to see a movie which we don't do very often. We saw Hugo and it was excellent. Very different, touching and, in the end, very feel good.
6:40 appointment at radiation oncology. No radiation, just more pictures to fine tune the treatment. Radiation will start tonight, again until 6:40. We have this time until the 29th then on the 30th it will move to 10:30 AM. We finally got home about 8:30.
Jerry found a place to move our motor home about four miles from the radiation clinic. It is a very nice resort-type park and even though they are not Thousand Trails they honor our membership so it is only about $100 a week. An added expense we had not planned on but worth it to save us both the drive every day. We will probably come up to the house most weekends but will decide that as we go on.
Thank goodness we have excellent medical insurance so the total treatment, etc should not cost us anything. We will move on the 26th so that we can be here for Christmas.
I am still feeling OK and trying to stay very positive. I believe attitude is a huge part of the cure. Jerry is being wonderful and telling me to just take it easy. This is a new experience for both of us and we will make it 100%.
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