Chemo Treatment #4 - Two More Left!

Friday, I had Chemo Treatment #4, I have two more to go, 6 more weeks.  The last 3 weeks between treatment #3 and #4, were a little harder.  The second week, on Monday, I had a lot of heartburn.  I called in to Tulsa and they said I needed to go to the Emergency Room because it felt like chest pains.

I went to the ER and they did an EKG on my heart and a CAT scan of my lungs, everything looked good, so it was heartburn.  The Herceptin that I am on is really hard on my heart, so they like to keep an eye on it.

This time, all of my blood counts were good, except for my Red Blood Cell count and my Hemoglobin.  The chemo lowers those and there really isn't much we can do about it.  The counts were still good though, no cause for alarm.  That does make me really tired.  I have a hard time walking and get winded easy and then my legs really get sore, because I can't get enough oxygen to my cells.

I'm still working and doing pretty well there.  When I come home, I'm pretty wiped.  I usually go to bed early.  But I haven't gotten sick, so that's still good.

I talked to the chemo nurse about when my hair would grow back.  Since I have to take 12 additional sessions of Herceptin, I figured it won't grow back until after I get through those, but she said that most people's hair starts growing back when they stop the chemo meds (after sessions 5 and 6).  So that made me feel better, I might have hair by winter.

Here was my treat after chemo, Andy's Frozen Custard from Springfield.  My favorite is the Caramel Pretzel Crunch.  It's so good!   Mark usually gets Raspberry Heath Bar.

We went to Sam's Club in Joplin on the way home and when I was there a lady stopped me and asked me if I was going through cancer treatments.  Her husband had colon cancer 10 years ago and she wanted to pray for me.  She was so sweet and talked to me quite a while and then said a prayer with me.

My friend Barbara made me some more hats, this is the whole set that she has made for me, I wear them all the time.

Another friend made me this one, Felicity.  I wore it to a soccer game when it was really cold.

My cousin Jeannie sent me these books.  She sends me cards about every week.  I've gotten several cards from different people, it's been so nice to get them and I save them all.

I got this cookbook from my cousin Rita.

My friend Margie gave me a bunch of stuff in some really cute bags, I didn't get a picture of those. She made me a big container of lasagna too.  I will probably cook it up tomorrow.

I also got a big sack of Pulled Pork from my friend Stephanie.  We've been eating on it all weekend too.

It's amazing how sweet people are, I love all my friends to much.

Some other random things from this week:

We went to an awards assembly at school this week, Kasey got a perfect attendance award.  He's had perfect attendance for 4 years in a row but they didn't recognize him for that, just for the 4th grade. We're so lucky he is never sick.  I think it's cute the kids in the background.

For some reason, I have been collecting stress balls -- any time I go to a trade show or somewhere where they have SWAG, I try to grab these.   I have some pretty cool ones, I really like the IT guy and gal.

I wanted Mark to make me a shelf to put them on in my office.  He thought he would just buy one already made and found one kinda like this one on Craig's list, but it was about $450.00.  He talked the guy down to $350, but decided that was too much.  If you know my husband, he can make anything, especially when he sets his mind to it.

After he told me this I went out to the shop and one of the guys had some scrap lumber on his bench. I asked him what he was doing with them, he said he was just going to take them home to burn them but I could have them if I wanted to.  So I brought them home!  Mark took the boards and used them on the back and then bought some smaller pieces for the shelves themselves.  We painted them a color that we used on our trim at work called Peppercorn.  When he painted that on the shelf, it was just too dark so he wiped it off and it looked perfect.  I just love it!  I love it even more that he made it.

My first day after chemo, I feel pretty good.  I got Kasey and his friend, Brady to pick up trash on our road.  They picked up a full trash bag of stuff.  They had a good time picking it up and hopefully, will learn not to litter.