Half-way, Sort Of

Today represents the half-way point!  … For Taxol.  Not for Herceptin, and certainly not for Tamoxifen, and not for the eventual reconstruction surgery process, but we will take what we can get.  Taxol is one of the things I’ve been worried about with her the most – mainly due to the possibility of adverse side-effects – so getting to a milestone mark is a big deal for us mentally.

Deb has been dealing with some of the on-going side-effects even after the oncologist cut the dosage of the Taxol, though they have been less severe overall.  She still has less stamina (though she is good at powering through), she still gets a little numbness in her fingers especially when she gets cold, and there are still occasions of low-grade to mid-grade nausea (though that is less when she takes the anti-nausea medication early enough).

The good news is that she’s been in excellent spirits for the most part.  Out-of-town guests have helped with that.  I previously reported that “Simone” had been here for a visit, but that she had left before last Monday Chemoday.  This last week brought even more visitors.

On Thursday we drove to Vancouver, BC to pick up a couple of Deb’s coworkers (Mike and Sarah) who had been attending a conference there.  We had dinner there and then drove them back to Seattle for the weekend.  After they all worked from Deb’s office on Friday (it was a bit crowded in there) we tried to give them the condensed Seattle experience (given that we only had around 48 hours to do it) but I think we hit the highlights well enough, including the Space Needle, the Pike Place Market, and the Ballard Locks.  Most people have heard of the first two of those, but everyone we take to the locks is fascinated by them (as are we) so I think that should be on every Seattle visitor’s list.  We also took in Discovery Park and a few other locations.  The one regret Mike had (that I’m aware of) is that he couldn’t see Mt. Rainier.  The clouds just wouldn’t cooperate.

We dropped them off at the airport around noon yesterday, so we had a good opportunity last night to see a couple of other good friends from Knoxville, John and Leslie, who had actually been in Seattle since Thursday evening as well, but they’d had plans of their own (they’d come in to see a particular concert on Saturday and just made a long weekend of it since it was John’s birthday).  We took them to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and had a nice evening of catching up, so that was lovely (though Deb’s nausea started catching up with her on the drive home).

But now the weekend fun is over and Chemoday #6 is upon us.  We’ve already picked up Deb’s cold caps at PraxAir and had breakfast at Macrina in SoDo.  I started writing this post at the coffee shop we went to so Deb could get some work done on her laptop before we reported to the torture chamber Infusion center.  I took a break to get us over here and I’ve just finished up putting the first cap on her.  Now the cycle begins of thrice-hourly replacements.  More fun than a barrel of monkeys (which I’m guessing that it wouldn’t really be fun to deal with a barrel of monkeys at all – and the smell … ew).