The end (of chemo) is nigh

Treatments six and seven are under my belt! Only one to go, hopefully. More on that in a sec.

Chemo number six continued the trend that began with the switch to Taxol. This time instead of Benadryl, I was given Claritin which made it a piece of cake. This round was really uneventful. Down right boring. Literally...three and a half hours of snoozeville. The only break in the monotony was needing to wheel the IV to the bathroom every twenty minutes.

As they say nothing is free. While I don't have the nausea and fatigue that came with the Adriamyacin and Cytoxin, I now have hot flashes and mild neuropathy to look forward to. I suppose I can deal with both, but it's hard being only 40 and going through menapausal symptoms.

My All-stars for this round are:
Rod for pinch hitting and taking me to chemo at the last minute!
Cari for bringing me super, awesome comfort food!
Kirsti for soup, picking up dog crap and cleaning up my storm ravaged yard :)

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I was a bit nervous that round seven would be postponed yesterday. Unfortunately I picked up a doozy of a cold on Christmas and the fear was that my blood counts would be too low for me to have treatment. Luckily that wasn't the case and chemo went off without a hitch. Almost.

As I said I have some neuropathy. To explain further, it is a tingling and numbness in the extremities. Mild cases can take several months to a year to go away after chemo. More severe symptoms can remain permanently. My oncologist was very adamant early on that I tell him immediately if I felt anything, especially in my hands...as that could interfere with my job. So far I'm only experiencing it in my toes and at times my feet feel like they're asleep.

Dr. Kovach and I discussed several options. One being a new chemo drug...which would likely make me really nauseous and fatigued. A second option was to split my last two treatments into 6 smaller weekly doses. I managed to talk him into letting me move forward status quo with the promise that I will tell him if the neuropathy gets worse over the next two weeks, in which case I'll have to take one of the other options.

Fingers crossed...

My thanks this week go out to Ray for putting up with the three hours of boredom, to Erica Jorgensen for the awesome quinoa salad, and finally to my baby sister Erika for cleaning the house (and poor Mugsy, who really needs a bath).