Round One --- down!

Sorry I am a little late on this one. I had part one of Round 1 last week and was looking forward to a reduced dose this past Thursday for part two. Well, there must have been a miscommunication somewhere along the line (of course the doc says it wasn't him..funny how docs never make mistakes!) but my regimen is actually both drugs, 8 days apart, then a week off. Then we do it all again for the next round. So hearing I was to have both drugs both times was a bit of a bummer. Yes I guess it's easier to tolerate, but I'm more of at do it all at once kind of gal. My mom used to tease me growing up because on house-cleaning day I would just go-go-go. No breaks, let's do this and get it done! Just seems to be my attitude towards everything I guess. I'd much rather feel like 100% crap for a few days and then feel pretty good for the next 2 1/2 weeks than feel like 50% for 10 days, then a week of good. I know my math is off here (story of my life with math ha ha!) but you get the point. I'd rather take it and be done with it than string it out. But it's not up to me and if this is the best way to beat this I'm all for it. Just kind of lousy to feel at half speed with the road still long ahead of me.

So, the actual session went ok on Thursday. My good friend Sharon visited me and that was awesome. I tried to convince Bruce to stay home thinking it was just going to be a quick hour but he would hear none of that and I'm so glad he came since I ended up being there almost 4 hours. The Gemzar was a pain this time, literally. Made my arm hurt like when you hit your funny bone. So they slowed the drip way down and that helped. My counts were way down too. Nothing like being handed a piece a paper with numbers all over it with the tags "critically low" or "low." Apparently, the ones that were critically low they didn't care about...really? You sure about that? Sounds kinda serious to me. But no, there were just two on there that were a smidge low but low enough at this point in my treatment to require a boost. So I'm on the Neulasta. You have to go back the next day to get the shot, but it is a miracle drug that boosts your bone marrow and keeps your immune system up. I had it last time and it was amazing...I am hoping it works just as well this time. It can cause bone pain, but so far not a huge issue which has been a relief.

Yesterday, the day after chemo, I felt freakin' great. Very strange. I did crash a little later and take a big nap, but I was feeling pretty dang good. Today not so much but it does seem to be getting better this evening and has already been better than last weekend. So maybe this spreading out won't be so bad. It's just so hard to predict when I'm going to feel ok and when I'm going to feel lousy. But with 10 treatments still ahead, I'll have lots of opportunities to figure it out. And with those being full sessions each time....more opportunities for visitors!