Cycle 1 COMPLETED!

I'm proud to say that I have completed Cycle 1 and only have 13 more to go!!!  Can I get an AMEN?? 

It all started Monday morning when I went to Ffx hospital to have my medaport placed.  The surgery only took about 45 mins, and I was "out in left field" the whole time.  It was really strange being able to hear and partially open my eyes to what was going on.  The Dr had numbed the area, so I couldn't feel anything, but I recall at one point I flinched and he said, "Did you feel that?" and then he told the nurse to up my medicine, haha!  When I was finished, they brought me back to center and I waited for them to remove all of the lines and covers off of me then I moved myself from the table to the stretcher. 

The rest of the day was fairly easy.  Did some work on the computer, slept and tried not to mess with the access point on my chest.  The part that hurt the most was the incision on my neck where they connected the tube to my vein.  It's fine now, but for that first day, it was difficult to move my neck. 

Tuesday was my first day of chemo. My stepmom, Becky, took me.  It's great because she already has Tuesdays off of work so this was perfect. This day was LONG.  We were there from 845 - 315.  I brought my whole setup with me, laptop, notebooks, iPad (thanks boy), magazines, etc.  The nurses started with hydration and mesna, the medicine to protect my bladder and kidneys from the chemo.  I received this in three doses, three hours apart.  Then they gave me a steroid and nausea meds, then the first round of chemo.  It was covered in a green bag, which was kinda scary in itself.  That dripped through me for 2 hours.  Hydration continued throughout the day.  The last two chemos for the day were pushes, which means the nurse just pushes them through my port IV instead of them dripping.  One of them is red in color, which obviously would cause my urine to be red, cool stuff, huh?  Anyways, after that and another round of mesna it was time to go home.  I had gained two pounds of fluid and felt like a stuffed sausage  :o(

The ride home was fine, I got home and took the dogs out, fed them, and then..... it hit me. NAUSEA, oh my goodness.  I took one of my medicines, but not soon enough.  I was out the rest of the night with nausea and an awful headache.  I couldn't eat a thing; I laid there in the dark, in the fetal position.  Luckily I was able to sleep fairly well, but oh man that was simply awful. 

Today was different.  I woke up to find that my access points had somehow come loose and bled under the covering to my access points.  It freaked me out a little bit and didn't help the fact that I was still feeling sick this morning.  My mom took me today, it was nice because she is a Nurse Practitioner, so when I freak out, she calms me down.... When I got to the Drs Office I told them about my night, the nurses told me what I should do from now on in order to combat the nausea and headaches.  Today was simply hydration, one push of the red chemo and some anti-nausea meds because I was having such a difficult time.  Today we were in at 945 and out at 1215.  Phew.  I came home and slept with the dogs for a few hours, got up and did some work, and slept again.  I think that's also the key, sleep, sleep, sleep. 

Tonight has not nearly been as bad.  I've take the medicine as advised by the nurses and so far so good.  I would not say I am 100% but I am at least 80% in the whole grand scheme of things.  Yesterday I could not even look at a computer screen and today I just wrote this whole post.  It's going to be a learning curve and I'm so glad so many of you are on board throughmy journey.

1 Cycle down, 13 more to go!!!