Chemo #2

Jennie came with me to my appointment yesterday. I think I annoyed people even more this time around by taking this photo. But I had to document the day! I wore my "Chemo Sucks!" pin from the Greens and the necklaces me and Micah made that say his and Caleb's name.

Paul once again drove all the way to the medical center to pray for me before we went in to the appointment.

Once I was in with Dr. Heyne we talked about my hospital visit. They were all happy with my white blood cell counts. I quizzed him again about prophylactic mastectomy on the right side. Doctors are all very careful to not give a definite "yes" or "no" about this. But I figure if I ask my onc. and my surgeon enough times, I'll eventually be able to piece together what they really think is the best option. I go back and forth on it myself. But yesterday was the first time he actually said that it would lower my chances of recurrence (if just by a bit) and that's a big deal.

We talked about my experience with the first round of chemo. He wasn't surprised at how long I used the nausea medicine. But he once again attributed that to me being younger. He was stumped by me feeling symptoms as early as 7 p.m. on day one. He thought it was unusual for me to feel so weak so quickly. So he wrote me a script for some steroids. (They give them intravenously the first day, and he was providing me pills to take on days 2-4.) Then he said that it was highly possible that I just had really bad timing and had picked up a sickness on my first day of chemo. He said for me to go home, see how chemo #2 goes and then call him if I'm experiencing the same weakness.

I had a pretty bad headache last night. Which is to be expected. Headaches are side effects of the meds I get in my I.V. But this morning I woke up and feel pretty good. Just a slightly queasy tummy and I'm tired. But not anymore tired than you'd expect from a bad night of sleep (it is really hard to sleep with all the steroids they give you).

So, praise God, it looks like Dr. Heyne might have been right and I might have had such a bad time last time because I was suffering from a virus on top of the chemo! I'm not going to get my hopes up too high, though. For now, I'm just going to be excited that Chemo #2 is starting off leaps and bounds better than Chemo #1! That's a lot to be grateful for! I'm so thankful you've all been praying for me! It's working-- don't stop now!