One Sohapi Girl: A girl and her first chemo treatment

It has been a couple of months since I updated my blog so let me try to do some catching up.

On March 31st, I had my first chemo treatment. I am doing a "cocktail" of four different infusions, plus supporting meds for side effects (anti-nausea, steroids, etc). The four main chemo drugs are THCP (Taxotere, Herceptin, Carboplatin, Perjeta). Since my infusions happen in San Francisco, I need a driver. My cousin Monica and her husband Marcos took me to my first treatment. I am happy to report that they got to enjoy time at the Academy of Sciences while my very long first infusion commenced.

It turns out that these meds are serious and heavy-duty. So much so that they take twice as long as normal to infuse the first time so that they can carefully monitor for anaphylaxis or other serious side effects that these drugs can have on your heart. So between the first few meds, my first day was 7-1/2 hours long!!! I am glad Monica and Marcos had something fun to do while they had to wait for me!

The nurses and staff are fabulous! They are clearly in the business of taking care of chemo patients. As I discussed later with family, you don't just "fall into" oncology care. You really have to have a passion for it and it shows.

I had a port placed on my upper left chest area. This is where they do the infusion. Wait, first things first. The stress level was high as we traveled along the Russian River corridor on Hwy 101 South and came to a complete stop for nearly an hour!!!!! Once we finally passed the overturned big rig, I was able to call and say I'd be half an hour late. They were all "don't worry, we know you're coming from far away so whenever you get here is fine." Shewwww!!! So we arrived at 10:00. I get my port tapped and blood drawn to make sure my blood counts are good (which they were for day one). Then I'm taken down the hall to the infusion center and hooked up to a rolling cart thing where they hang all the infusion bags (I named this cart Rollie and we are tethered together for the rest of the day).

Me and Rollie! We are tethered together all day!

Lunch time!

The pre-meds are infused and hooked up by Jenn. Then when it was time for the chemo, a second nurse comes in for double-check. They double-check the drug I am getting, the dosage, how long to infuse and that it's me that it's for. The first two were at two hours each; the last two were at one hour each. During the final infusion, I was given a surprise: an alien baby was going to be attached to my lower belly!!! Yes, an alien baby stuck to me with adhesive then a needle came into play (felt like a rubber-band snap). Once the needle went in, it would be 27 hours later that it would infuse Nuelasta, a drug to encourage my bone marrow to release while blood cells. Turns out low while blood count is a serious business when you're on chemo so they do what they can to keep it up. As they say in American Flyers: once you've got it up, keep it up! Ha!!

I was THE very last patient by far when I finally got sprung at 5:30. Of course all the doors were closed and the halls were dark so I came out clear on the wrong side of the building. Geez, walking around the block and up the hill was exhausting, but I made it. And we zoomed on home--we all opted to just head home unless we got hungry and needed to stop. So day one was long--we left the house at 7:00 a.m. and got home at 9:30 p.m. My many thanks to Monica and Marcos for getting me there and back again!!