First Round of Chemo

Thursday was my first round of chemo. We got to Ashland around 8:40 a.m. to start the day off with my Muga Scan. This is a scan of my heart using radioactive material to see if my heart was health enough to start chemo. The poor lady tried to get an IV started on me twice and blew the vein out both times. I asked if we could just use the port and she said they can't with radioactive material. So then we had to get two other people to try and finally the second guy was able to get the IV in and get the stuff started. The first fluid they pumped in had to go through my system for 20 minutes. I guess this was to get the blood cells ready to grab onto the radioactive stuff later. So I went back to the waiting room sat with Bev and Jamie for a bit. Once the 20 minutes were up they pumped in the radioactive material and we were ready to go. I had to lay on a table that slid into a tube, sort of mix between an X-ray machine and a MRI machine. The first picture was the side of my heart and the second was from above. Each picture took about 10 minutes to take.

Then it was over to the cancer center to start the chemo. We got there around 10:00 or so and they gave us a room right off the main desk. Which was their first mistake. : )


Here are Bev and Jamie playing their ipods waiting to get on with the chemo. They were having Farkle contests.

This is Brooke (awesome) she is accessing my port to get an IV started for all the medicines. And yes it did hurt as you can see from my face. It sort of felt like she was plugging something into me. Which I guess she was.

All done with that part.

I got a new blanket from the cancer center. Brooke tried to have Bev and Jamie pick one out for me but in the end I had to pick from four different ones. We picked this one since there were M & M guys on it. : )

Here is the first drug of the day. As you can see this one is red and comes in a big syringe she has to push over 15 minutes. They also have to wear gloves and an apron cause they can't get any of the chemo on their skin. Makes me feel good that it's going into my veins. Doesn't that just seem wrong??? : )

This poor girl had to sit with us and listen to us. They were laughing so hard at us by the time we were done. They even came in to figure out if Bev and I were sisters, cause they thought Jamie looked more like my brother. Oh man we laughed at that one. I think they liked us.

Here I'm into the last drug. This one was a drip for 45 minutes. Bev asked the nurse at one point if I was ok cause I looked stoned. And I would have to agree it was starting to take a toll on me at this point. I could feel myself drifting and not concentrating on anything. I would start to read from my book and it wouldn't make any sense. I don't like that drug to much.

Once we left I was pretty tired and was starting to get an upset stomach. Which seems to come and go as the days go on. Bev has been really good about making me eat small things here and there. I'm just thankful that it's not to the point that I have to throw up it just feels like I road a roller coaster to many times. Here's hoping to them all feeling this way. And that it will only last a couple days.