Day One

Chemotherapy # 1 was today. It went really well.

Four years ago, when Jody endured nearly six months of chemo (Adriamycin, Cytoxan and Taxol, administered intravenously over the course of 5-6 hours every three weeks, for a total of 8 sessions), she escaped relatively unscathed. She lost her hair, and she had some neuropathy (tingling in the extremities); she also usually had a little fatigue the weekend after the treatment. But given the horrors we'd imagined, it was really quite manageable.

So this time around, we haven't been too fazed by the looming prospect of chemo. Between the two surgeries, the ten thousand doctors' consultations and the IVF circus, we've had enough on our plate. Chemo was the one semi-known quantity. It's just been hovering quietly out there on the horizon—a small speck, growing imperceptibly over the weeks, and whoops! you turn around and it's at the door. C-Day. Day One.

We've had our sights set on this day for a while, almost impatient to get moving with it. The sooner you start the chemo, the sooner you're killing the disease and (of course) the sooner you get to stop. Plus, as I said, it's a semi-known quantity. We've reasoned to ourselves: it went well last time, some of the drugs are similar, so we expect it to go well this time until we're proven wrong.

Still.

Being back in the cancer center and actually having the two lines flushed in Jody's newly-implanted port was a bit overwhelming, for both of us. Now that C-day had officially arrived, we were caught off guard. By what? By the massiveness of this whole undertaking, I guess. I haven't had a chance to poll Jody (she's asleep next me as I type this, while Herceptin dripdripdrips into her chest). But you know if you've ever been through a really traumatic event that you steel yourself to cope with it, for as long as it takes. Then one day, you feel like you can let up a bit, relax just a bit. You untense your muscles and take your first real deep breath in weeks, and suddenly you're sobbing uncontrollably. Where in the hell did that come from?

I think the familiarity of the chemo process actually permitted us to relax in a way. And finally—looking at tubes and IV machines and bags of fluid with big warnings on them—it hit us both that as optimistic as we feel, as gung-ho as we are to kick the crap out of this thing, we're still dealing with, you know, chemotherapy. Jody is going to have to trash her body quite a bit over the next several weeks.

That having been said, I repeat that it went well. (It's later now, and we're home.)

After today's treatment (which was Carboplatin, Herceptin, and Taxotere), as far as we know, there has been no hair loss (may be total, but usually reversible), no decreased hearing in high frequency and voice ranges, no loss of balance, no mouth ulcers, no unusual taste (okay, we've actually had that now), no sore throat, no lung damage, no changes in heartbeat, no heart failure (we're pretty sure of that one), no constipation, no intestinal ulcers, no nausea, no vomiting, no diarrhea, no burning with urination, no bleeding into urine, no kidney damage, no hot flashes, no elevation of blood sugar, no tingling in the fingers, toes or extremities, no pain in the jaw, no muscle weakness, no irritability, no depression, no confusion, no foot drop, no lowering of blood counts including hemoglobin and possibly requiring transfusion, no lowering of white blood counts leading to increased susceptibility to infection, including life-threatening infection requiring hospitalization and antibiotics, no lowering of platelets leading to increased susceptibility to easy bruising and severe bleeding, requiring platelet transfusion, no hardening of the veins in the area of the injection and the veins above this site, no ulcer formation or discomfort in the region of intravenous drug injection.

In short, despite being presented with a dazzling array of potential side effects from Jody's treatment, we got out of Dodge in good shape. Of course, some of these things may have happened without us knowing about them, or they may come in time. But by and large (knock on wood), today was pretty smooth sailing.

We'll keep you posted on any side effects that show up in the future.