Ideas to help your friends; chemo 4 is a done-deal

As I got ready to go to chemo infusion today I thought I would share with you some things that seem to make the long afternoons go by faster and easier. You or one of your friends may face this pilgrimage some day and you might find some ideas here. My friend Joan shared a DVD player and some movies with me. Katherine bought some “Scrubs” DVDs which are short and pure nonsense for bad times and short attention spans. Carolyn brought some movies as well. This clinic is wi-fi enabled so many people have iPads and laptops along. Having ones own blanket is nice because the clinic blankets shed like crazy. The clinic provides water, juices, coffee. The people who can eat while getting chemo bring snacks. I can’t eat. [And it is impolite to bring in “smelly” food in the infusion room so once in a while someone has to be asked to put away leftover ethnic foods]. And one needs reading material. I take a couple of magazines and a book. This amount of “stuff” was too much for me to carry in the beginning so I used my tiny rolling airplane tote. Today I had my winter coat for cover and was planning on napping. So I took magazines and a book and a pink breast cancer mug my friend Kay A sent me…all tucked in a wine tote from Kroger! It has six pockets and was perfect for the task!!

Officially I am 2/3 done with chemo as of today!!! So the hard part for now is to get through this next 1½ weeks of fatigue and gagging and sleeplessness. Hopefully these will be the biggest problems because I have learned to live with these issues. My blood values were up this week. The white count was perfect and the red count was “in range.” I had doubled my B complex vitamin several weeks ago and I think it paid off. And today I had some blood pressure. Last week Dr. deleted my high blood pressure medication and today I was in the normal range for most people…though a little high for me. This is going to need careful monitoring!!!!

There is no way to know how the chemo is going to hit me during any given session. After the anti nausea med and Benadryl, the first drug I get is the red stuff that causes mouth sores and goes in IV push. It hurts from the point that it hits the end of the port tube all the way down into and through the larger vein when it stings. Once the red is in and a flush pushes out of the port line into the vein I can relax. The next chemo drugs and ancillary drugs are easy and I don’t even feel them dripping in. Sometimes the 3+ hours go by quickly; sometimes it seems to take days. My buddy Maureen graduated from Monday chemo pod last week so I was more lonesome this week.

When I got home from chemo today I needed something to eat since I’d been drugging all afternoon. My friend MaryAnn had sent me a treat! Her daughter lives in Quitar and brought her parents packages of dates which MaryAnn shared one with me. When Katherine and I were in Morocco we had the most wonderful dates and these from Quitar rival those for sure!! So I pitted some dates, inserted pecan halves, sat these on a thin slices of Brie cheese on a flatbread crackers. And for dessert I had a couple of plain dates. O, my!! Hopefully tomorrow we can make some date oat bran muffins. Dates are more fun than candy sometimes! Thank you, Mary Ann.

So stay turned. We are beginning to see the end of the chemo tunnel. We are planning an escape from North Texas!!! How [RV or Jeep or Plane] and where is under discussion. Some of you may want to go along!!!