Blog 1: stranded on the tarmac; my flight has been grounded

I decided to blog about my great retirement travels because I want to share my great fun traveling around the world and to encourage friends to join me either in spirit or with luggage in hand. I love to travel and will take you along for the ride. I want to see at least one reservation booked on my American Airlines Gold Account. I entered the AA contest to win a zillion miles and will post a few of the supporting reasons as we go along.

Unfortunately my next flight plans have been grounded. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, a Stage 2, Grade 3, invasive and aggressive type of cancer. The surgery on Oct 14 was successful in that the 5 cm mass was removed and margins are clean. Five lymph nodes were positive for cancer and were removed. This kind of cancer indicates the need for both chemotherapy and radiation to be followed by 5 years of oral medication. The cancer is estrogen and progesterone positive which the oncologist says is a good thing because this type “behaves better” through treatment. .

The surgery took some time to heal and I’m now well enough to get ready for chemotherapy. But before chemo, I need to get a port inserted in a major chest vein so the chemo drugs can be infused without puncture after puncture. The port surgery is scheduled for Nov 3 and will use up the whole day at the hospital. Then on Nov 4 I go back to the hospital for an echocardiogram in the morning and a bone scan in the afternoon. The dye is injected at noon and then I wait for 3 hours for the actual scan. Another day shot!!! Then on Nov 5 I’m off to the oncology clinic for a CT scan. Hopefully that will be only a half day. Then I’ll have the weekend to recover from the testing hassles.

Our good friends Ken and Katy  should be here over the weekend plus a few days both sides of the weekend. What a blessing!!! In addition to just sharing time together, Katy wants to do some home cookin’ for us. Well, honey, it won’t take me long to find you an apron!! I think I’ll be cuddled up on the couch with Domino sucking my thumb. Ken and Katy will travel on to Tucson early in the week. We’ll miss not getting to play with our Tucson friends and Domino will REALLY miss daily dog park visits. 

Monday Nov 8 at 1:30 I go back to the oncology clinic for my first chemotherapy session. It should take 4 hours since it is the 1^st one.  Here’s the recipe for my cocktail, such as it is. It will include Taxotere [Docetaxel] plus Adriamycin [Doxorubicin] and Cytoxan [Cyclophosphamide] to be followed the next day by an injection of Neulasta [pegfilgrastim]. The neulasta shot is $8000 per shot!! The chemo cocktail tries to kill me and the neulasta is to increase my white blood cell count. Whee.

The plan is for this chemo drill to repeat every 3 weeks for 6 cycles by which time I will be tired, joints aching, bald, have nausea and worse……..and those are the lesser evils. I can hardly wait to get this started …….. no, really…. The sooner it gets started the sooner it gets finished and I can get back on the road again.

I’ll post more this week and let you know how I’m doing and what Katy is cooking.