One down, seven to go

Well, I had my first good old chemo appt today.

There’s a lot I could say about it.
I don’t even know where to start.

It’s pretty late and they told me I might have trouble sleeping tonight because of one of the drugs they gave me.

Here is one of the things that has happened to me over the last month that is really annoying to me… I’ve become one of those people who has this drug to suppress one problem, but I have to take this other drug to off-set the side effects of drug #1.
I think I am going to have to celebrate with a week at Detox when this is all over.
So, tonight I am pumped up on steroids that mask how lousy I really feel and then there is some gravol on top of that, which masks some other aspect of how I really feel. And then there is a medication that deals with any potential allergic reaction, which is making me drowsy and slamming into the steroid that is keeping me awake. I told Elaine I am having myself a chemo speedball. I think the original formula is a better product from a marketing angle.

I found out how good a job the gravol does when I sort of slid down in the feeling good department and started to get a bit sweaty during the chemo.
Elaine was chatting with the nurse pretty quick and she slid me a flap of Gravol and I perked up instantly.

Anyway, my day in chemo…

It wasn’t what I imagined, but it was okay.
My hair hasn’t fallen out yet, in case anyone was thinking it might work that fast, but I expect the big head shaving will happen sometime this weekend, depending on how I feel. (The standard hair loss pattern is that it starts to go sometime within 2 weeks and I don’t want to look like a moulting bird.)
Fellow head-shavers are more than welcome to let me know what day works better for them. (A couple of folks have said they will shave their heads in solidarity, which I think is so incredibly sweet, I don’t have words for it.)

I think I will wrap this up now and fill in some detail sometime soon.
I know that there are people out there who are wondering how it all went.
And my answer is, it was hard and unpleasant and kind of awful at a couple of points, but it okay too. I knew it was going to be hard, and it was.
Right now, I feel like I just made it to the top of that first hill on the roller coaster at the PNE…. and now we have to hang on for the ride.