Finally...T12!!!

Oh my, I feel pretty crappy so I don't think it has hit me yet that I'm actually done with chemo. Since it was the last one, it of course couldn't go as smoothly as the last few. It was easy to take in stride though.

The night before I was in a celebratory and downer mood at the same time, so I went out for drinks with Jaime. Probably not a good idea the night before treatment, but I didn't give much thought to it at the time. We had a great night! I sold some concert tickets and treated us to dinner and drinks... it was quite relaxing. Then comes treatment. My mom is in town so she was excited to take me to my last one. As usual, the first thing I do when I get there is have blood drawn. They have this spiffy machine that can do a full blood count in 2 min. that way the doctor has the info before you start treatment. So they put the special needle in my port, flush it and get no blood return. We know its working because when they flush it with saline, its normal to get a horrible taste in the mouth. So we try for about 20 min. and no luck. They send me to treatment room to lay down and flush the port with Hepburn something that breaks down build up in the catheter. I lay there for 10min. and still nothing. So, I go have my exam anyway then back to the lab. Still nothing. At this point I am standing and dancing with my arms up in the air. Then we decide we need to just poke my arm. FUN! So she goes into the left one, gets nothing, wiggles around, nothing. I am beginning to think I am bloodless. She says that is not possible. Phlebotomists have no sense of humor. So she pokes the right arm, nothing. Finally we do the top of the right hand and low and behold we have blood! It took four freaking pokes. I walked back into the treatment room with gauze on both arms, one hand and my usual hook up to my port so they could attach IV to it for treatment. It was amusing to the nurses indeed.

So, I have treatment, it was all normal. However, for some reason when I got home I was really nauseated. This doesn't happen to me, I have been so blessed. So I sleep, get up for a bit, go to bed for the night, toss and turn even with the fatigue causing anti-nausea meds. Weird. So I have been up since, just hoping I can chill and feel better enough to nap. I am so tired, I need it. So now I'm writing on this and reading a book, hopefully something will work.

While there yesterday, I got scheduled for my first PET (Post Emission Tomography) scan. I was supposed to be having these every four weeks but it didn't quite work out that way for my situation. I guess it lasts for 2 hours and they put an IV in to inject a radioactive material called fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) that gamma rays in the machine can pick up. The cells in my body that are live and active (including cancer cells) will light up on the scan while the scar tissue that has formed from killing the cancer will not. They can then see how much active cancer is in the lump in my chest. This will help determine how much radiation I'll have. We know it will be a minimum of four weeks, every day Monday thru Friday. It could be up to six depending. I have my initial appt. with Dr. Bader, my radiologist, on the 30th.

So thats the update for now, sorry so long. Email me if you have any questions. xo