Feel the Fear/Chemo #1

My SIL, Debbie, gave me this "courage" stone shortly after I was diagnosed.
I took the stone along with me to chemo this morning and kept it in my pocket. It will go with me for all my chemo treatments. Yesterday I was feeling pretty nervous about the chemo (who wouldn't be nervous about having toxic drugs pumped into your system) and when I took the box out last night to put the stone in my hospital bag I saw the message written on the box "feel the fear and do it anyway" Well, that pretty much says it all, doesn't it??!!! I left the house this morning ready to go!! Thanks Debbie. It was the perfect gift for the perfect time!



I was at the cancer center bright and early just to catch a nice sunrise coming up over the lake.



I arrived at he cancer center at 7:15 for labs where they drew my blood and then placed on IV line in my wrist. I then had an oncologist meeting at 8:30 with Dr. Charlson and his nurse just to go over what was going to happen and check my labs. He is super doctor and his nurse is really great also. Everyone I encountered today was wonderful. My chemo started pretty much on time and the great news was that it was only going to take 3 hours, not the 5 hours like they had originally said. Premeds included another dose of a steroid, anti nausea (15 minutes total) and then the Taxotere (dripped for one hour) and Cytoxan (dripped for another hour). I sat in a nice lounger and read for most of the time in between a few phone calls and some text messages. It was pretty uneventful, which is a good thing! I left feeling not any different than when I arrived. I stopped at Panera and grabbed some soup and I am home. I will know in about 3 days what side effects will hit me. Both my doc and nurse think I will have no problems with the combination of drugs. One down three to go. Yippeee!!

I would like ask for some prayers for 3 people that I know. (I won't use their names for their privacy) The first person is sort of a distant family member who is having a bilateral mastectomy today for breast cancer. The other is a mom who I ran into this morning at the day hospital that I know personally and has a recurrence of cancer 5 years out. We were both very surprised to see each other there! The third is a good friend of ours who is battling prostate cancer and has gone through some radiation and will require some more shortly. I am finding out more and more every day about people that I know that are having to deal with cancer. It makes me very sad. Please pray for these people as they fight! Thank you!!!