Done With Chemo!!!
Written Nov 6, 2011 10:42pm
I don’t know if it has really hit me yet that I am done with chemo, but I am!!! It will probably be more real for me this Friday when I DON’T go spend the day in the hospital!!
I brought Alec with me on Friday and we stocked up on snacks and brought a Christmas video and some reading and drawing materials, and had a fun day together in the infusion room. I know it was probably a little strange for him to see me as a patient and to see me all hooked up to the drip with the chemo drugs going into me.
He asked me a couple of times if it hurt. I assured him that it didn’t. The nurses were very nice to him, but they did tell me that they don’t like anyone under 12 to come in the future. Good thing for me I am not planning on going back for any more rounds of chemo!!
I was definitely mentally prepared to be done on Friday, but there was a moment of uncertainty after my blood work came back and my white blood cell count was lower than their standards. My granulocite number was also slightly low. I had to wait for approval from my doctor to go ahead and receive my last dose of chemo. I was relieved when the approval came, because I would have been disappointed to have to wait another week to be done. So now I have to be extra careful this week to not get sick, because my wbc count is low, and I received chemo, so now it is probably going to go even lower.
When I was almost done, the nurses in the infusion room came around and sang me a little song about being done with chemo. It was very sweet! They also gave me a blanket as a parting gift. This is what they do for all patients when it is their last day of chemo. I have really been treated well at Huntsman, and have made good friends with some of the nurses there. I will still go up every 3 weeks for Herceptin until next August, so I will still see them, but I had a spring in my step as I left the hospital on Friday knowing that I was done with Taxol!
My PET scan is scheduled for November 29th. I will also meet with the radiologist next week to determine the plan for radiation. But in the meantime I have about 3 weeks to recover from chemo and to not be treated.
I am so thankful to be done with chemo and to be feeling well!! I signed up for a 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, and am so excited to be getting ready for a race! It will be my goal just to run the whole thing. I am very slow when I run right now, but it just makes me happy to think about doing a race again. I will run with a friend and with my sister-in-law. I am looking forward to doing things that make me feel like myself again!!
I really love all of you who have been reading my blog and encouraging me through all of this. Thank you so much! I am looking forward to getting my PET scan and seeing how the chemo has worked. Because it was looking good halfway through the summer, I anticipate a good result, but how good, I do not know. I also want this scan to be clearer, and it should be because we will wait a little longer to get all of the drugs out of my body that can interfere with the clarity of the image. I will write again after I get my PET scan results on the 29th.
Yay for no more chemo!!!! =)