Chemo Cubed

It’s Monday again, and that means … Chemo Day!!!  The day we look forward to (no we don’t) for the entire week (really, we don’t) and especially build up our anticipation (are you kidding me?) over the weekend as it approaches (Oh good grief no, no, no, no).

So Chemo Day always starts with us leaving the house at around 7:30 am after taking the dog out, feeding her, and apologizing to her that she’ll be cooped up for the next 8+ hours.  We drive from the north end of Seattle to the place south of downtown where we pick up the cold caps and enough dry ice to keep them cold throughout the day.  I’m going to have to leave JJ at PraxAir one heckuva Yelp! review for his help in this.  And maybe a plate of homemade cookies.

Next on the agenda is breakfast (and COFFEE!!!) somewhere either south of downtown or on Capitol Hill before holing up in a coffee shop so she can get some work done on her laptop until her infusion appointment at around noon.  I split my laptop time between this blog and working on a presentation I’ll be giving in May.

Then we actually go to the infusion center.  Deb’s oncologist always wants to see her first to go over any issues from the last week and to review Deb’s most recent bloodwork (which she has drawn on Friday afternoon).  Then we go back to the party infusion room and get Deb a chair while the nurse puts a needle in the port and I get Deb’s cold cap stuff ready to go (there’s about 10 to 15 minutes of work that goes into that). 

The first chemo drug is Herceptin for 30 minutes, so she gets to start getting her freezy-head during that before they start with the taxol - which lasts for the next hour - all the while changing out caps every 20 minutes.  After all that, they pull the needle from the port and kick us out (“Not so rough! Please!”).  We head back to the parking garage and change out the cap one more time before getting in the car and heading home, all with the hope that traffic will allow us to make only one change-out stop before we get home.

Once home I make up with the dog (she’s fairly forgiving) and continue to help with cap changes for Deb (while she keeps going on her laptop doing work) until four hours have passed since the taxol infusion ended.  Then Deb is free to thaw out her brain, we get dinner of some form or another, and then I take the dog out for a long walk while Deb collapses into a puddle of goo.  Or she might come with us.  Depends on how she feels, but even if she goes for the walk, the puddle state will come soon after we get back.

And that’s our Mondays right now, with the little minutiae of life thrown in along the way.  So today I started this post at the coffee house, and I’m trying to finish it up now while Deb is getting the initial pre-medications before the Herceptin begins.  The first cap is on and the second one is on deck, so to speak (if you like baseball metaphors).

And for those of you keeping score at home, today represents 25% of the way through the 12 weeks of taxol.