#7 Taxol - Rehired the hubby!

I'm on #7......BAAAAM!

As you know chemo really messes with your emotions and makes it difficult to handle things at times. On my last AC treatment back in February I fired my husband from being my chemo partner! I told him that.....you are fired from being my caregiver!  It was a stressful day for me and he was wrapped up on the phone, emails, and texts with work and couldn't focus on me. I had a lot going on and just couldn't handle any additional stress. It all worked out because I was able to share my chemo experience with my family so they could fight with me even more!

For chemo #7 I hired my husband back as my chemo partner!! It was a good day and he's learned a lot over the past few months on how to deal with his wife, the cancer patient. I think it's good for him to be with me for my doctor's appointments before chemo so he can hear it from them as to why I am so off schedule and that this is temporary. They say it will be six months to a year before I am "normal" again. We had a good time and here are some pics of his long hair and my bald head.

I always seem to get dehydrated after chemo and I asked for them to increase the amount of fluids during infusion.  Now I get 500ml of fluids (before 250ml) during chemo and it made a huge difference in how I recovered afterwards.  I wish I knew that trick months ago!!

My 4 dogo girls resting with me after chemo

My Moxy girl giving me love after chemo

Now, you know when something goes well then something else goes wrong? I was home on Friday (3 days after chemo) and vomited pretty much everything in my body! It was awful and I will spare you the details.  All I know is that I was happy not to worry about holding my hair back!! All FOUR of my dogo girls were home with me and all FOUR of them were in the bathroom helping me while this was going on!! I don't know what caused this but I doubt it was the oxycodone or antibiotics I was on since it's never been a problem before. Taxol has made me nauseous each time and I've read and heard that it's fairly common. With that being said, I decided to take Compazine (anti-nausea med) for the following few days.






My attempt to get some strength back!

Next time I will use sneakers, this hurts my feet!

I had a lot of pain with this round that first weekend.  I also had the Neulasta shot which seems to increase the amount of pain. Most of the pain is in my legs and hips. There are two days where I have pain in my spine and it will radiate throughout my abdomen like electricity. I really hate that feeling and will not miss it once this is over. I thought maybe exercise may help ease the feeling so I started doing some exercises on the floor or in my bed with resistance bands.  I don't know if it helped but  I need to start building some strength back up so I'll continue to do this.
My doctor told me I would gain about 20 pounds on chemo and that freaked me out. I already needed to lose over 20 pounds before this even started! I am down about 5 pounds from the beginning but it's nothing to do a cartwheel for. I was mushy before and now I have no muscle tone and my arms are even more flabby. I feel like I gained 20 pounds but I think the fat and water is just moving around to other areas of my body. I am looking forward to working this off when I'm done!




You may recall that I have issues with insomnia. This seems to be worse the second week after chemo.  The one night I was up until 6:30AM and that was after taking 2 Ativans and 1 Oxycodone. I'm just going to accept that this is a problem and it's temporary. I've tried everything but the real issue is that during this time my heart rate is between 90-115bpm.......while laying in bed doing nothing! You can't fall asleep like that. I'm sure Dave could fall asleep like that because he can sleep anywhere.  Here he is dozing off while I was hooked up to chemo. I envy those who can sleep any time and anywhere...

Tomorrow is my last chemo! It feels like a graduation to me and I am so excited. Usually I am anxious the day before chemo but today I have a different feeling and I like it. My GI tract is a mess from this Taxol and I am looking forward to just one more round so it will go away.

My next challenge is surgery and my double mastectomy is planned for the first week of June. During surgery they will run some tests on the lymph nodes they remove and if any come back with cancer then they will remove all of them.  If that is the case then I will have to do radiation but the doctors are confident that I am a stage 2 patient and since I'm doing a double mastectomy no radiation will be needed.

I hope my doctors are right and that I can do this without radiation. I want everyone to know that your support and prayers have been greatly appreciated! The cards, gifts, and support have been overwhelming. I decided to do Miles for Moffitt and I cannot believe how awesome my team and group of supporters have been!  Below is a card I got from my good friend's sweet daughters and thought I would share it with you!

  




Chemo #6 & Taxol - Dehydration got me again!

I had full intentions of blogging after each chemo but procrastination and being a slacker has taken over! It's really hard to keep up with myself these days but I'm trying! Dealing with cancer takes up your entire life and not a moment goes by without me thinking about it or doing something related to it. I was talking to a friend who is in the very end stages of reconstructive surgery and she mentioned that now she has all this extra time that was devoted to cancer. Quite frankly, she doesn't know what to do with it! I cannot wait to have that feeling myself!

The Taxol treatment I'm on now has been tough on me but in a different way than the AC treatment. I don't know if it's fair to say that this is "easier" but it has been a little more tolerable to deal with. For my second round of Taxol I brought my dad with me to be my chemo buddy.  We marched around Moffitt and he got to experience the full effect of what I do on chemo day. I think this is something everyone should try and do for a loved once if possible. My check in time was at 9am and like always, they were backed up a couple hours so we were there the ENTIRE day and left in the evening at some point. It is annoying when it's backed up but you have to consider that things happen out of your control and it's really not that big of a deal. My dad doesn't live nearby so it was nice to be able to spend time with him even if it was at a cancer hospital!

The best way to get your name called is to get a warm blanket and make yourself comfy! That's exactly what I did and that is what happened within about 5 minutes........"FAY"!

After I get home from chemo I really try to just take it easy the next few days. This second Taxol treatment had me exhausted and I just could not get out of bed. I tried to drink water but that's hard to do when you're sleeping! So by Friday (3 days later) I felt like crap but went to work to try and get caught up.  That lasted all of about 15 minutes and I couldn't catch my breath. I was lightheaded and just felt weak. My husband put me in my mom's car and we headed to Moffitt to get evaluated. They did a ECHO cardiogram, CT scan, and Bloodwork....... all to find out I was just really dehydrated! They pumped me with a liter of fluids and I was back to normal! I can't believe how easy it is to get dehydrated and how it knocks me on my ass.

Another side effect I get with Taxol is PAIN! My legs hurt, especially my hips and femur. It's hard to explain but they hurt all over and my arms often hurt too. I tried Vicodan and Percocet but they didn't seem to do the trick. Now they have me on Oxycodone 5mg IR (as needed) and it works....usually. I also take Mobic on a daily basis.  I'm sharing this information for anyone out there trying to find something that works. We are all so different and have to try different meds until we find the ones that work!

Now this side effect may gross you out! Taxol is hard on the nails and I have been lucky enough to only have ONE toenail with problems.  It started as a red spot just after my first round of Taxol and got worse over time. It appears more painful that it really was, I just felt a little pressure. When my PA saw it last week (middle image) she immediately put me on some antibiotics so now it's looking "normal" again (bottom image). I am fairly sure this toe nail will fall off and I'm making sure that doesn't happen until it's ready! Some patients get this on all their nails so I consider myself lucky to just have one at this point. I sure do miss getting pedicures and CANNOT WAIT to be able to schedule one soon!

Nail infection oldest (top) to newest (bottom)

Now a blog wouldn't be complete if it didn't have a picture of one of my furbabies that help get me through all of this. This is Moxy and she's not very good at sharing me!

Thanks for reading!

The Insomnia Experiment

As a scientist at heart I LOVE a good experiment. I don't think this one will have all the right controls in place but it will be interesting at the least. Chemo seems to disrupt all kinds of things and it really likes to disrupt my sleep! Some days after chemo I literally sleep ALL day and night and wish I was wearing a diaper so I wouldn't have to get up and use the bathroom! Then after the day time sleeping wears off I tend to have issues falling asleep no matter what. Sometimes I am productive while being wide awake but often I just want to go to sleep so I can wake up the next day!

Pumpkin is snoring in this picture....I'm wide awake!

However, I DO NOT LIKE MORNINGS.  I never have and I don't think that is going to change. I'd prefer just to casually wake up around 9 or 10 AM.....no alarm.  I don't like alarms either, they drive me nuts. Many of you reading this are shaking your heads in agreement right now because I know this is not just my preference!

Anyway, my husband likes to get started first thing in the morning......before the sun is out. Who would want to do this? But, we have a business to run and we get started early because our customers get started early so we have no choice. Normally I would get to the office around 8am and now I don't get there until after 10am......at the earliest! But I have cancer right now and I'm on chemo along with other meds, so my sleep is totally out of whack.

For example, last night I took 1 oxycodone to help with my leg and joint pains at about 10pm.  I also took an Ativan at the same time to help relax me and hopefully get to bed before midnight. At 11pm I was reading in bed with no signs of being sleepy.  So I took another Ativan and thought that by midnight I would be in la la land. Nope, I tried falling asleep then eventually got on my iPad and played some Candy Crush until I ran out of lives. I emailed myself a few times with things I needed to do the next day and I bought a few items on Groupon! The longer I am awake, the more I spend shopping, go figure. Now it's midnight and I am WIDE AWAKE and having a conversation with the hubby about falling asleep (who fell asleep earlier on the couch and just got in bed). He can fall asleep anywhere under any conditions.  They guy will find an

Sleeping at the hospital, I'm wide awake on Benadryl & Ativan

uncomfortable spot to fall asleep while working on a ship at the port! This will happen if there is a work delay due to other contractors or weather, but it's still weird. I don't understand this type of behavior!  Anyway, I took my heart rate while we were talking and it was at 106 bpm.....WHY?! I did not have caffeine or anything that would do this but I deal with it nightly. You can't fall asleep when your heart rate is jacked up like it just had a red bull and espresso! Some time after 2am I finally fell asleep and then didn't wake up until almost 11am when my phone rang from a annoying solicitor. This happened the night before but I was even more unsuccessful because I was up until 4am.



This is what I think of insomnia!!
 

The challenge will be for me to fall asleep earlier and get up earlier. Dave thinks I can break this late sleep/late morning cycle and so I'm going to try. I don't believe this will make me like mornings any more than I do now but it's worth a try. Starting tonight I am going to start the sleep process at 8pm. The goal is to be asleep by 10pm! I will probably have to do this with the help of some Ambien, so neighbors beware of random bald sleepwalker in the area! I'll give this experiment a week and see if it changes my sleep cycle. I'm convinced that mornings are not meant for me and that I am supposed to be nocturnal but we shall see.

Wish me luck and I will do an update later to let you know how this works out. Trying to put sleep on a schedule during chemo is quite the challenge in my opinion. Enjoy the pictures below of me awake while my dogs are asleep.  They are NOT supposed to be in the bed so I hope the husband doesn't see this post!!

Pumpkin sleeping and snoring, she's a lover....unless it's a hog, she takes them down!

Kadena is a lover too, she opened her eyes when I took this pic!

This is ridiculous, I'm a dogo sandwich and they are BOTH asleep!

Vixen just sleeping away here, she doesn't snore as bad as Pumpkin though.

You can barely see but Hunter is behind me with his arm around my side, he snores too.

Gotta love dogs, they sure do make life even better!