Chemo Infusion 2: And Then We Shopped
Yesterday was my second chemo infusion. Because my appointment with my oncologist's nurse practitioner was scheduled for 8:30 am (and I needed to get lab work done beforehand), Kathy and I had to leave the house at 6:30, ice chest in tow.
Earlier this week, I had contacted the company that makes the hypothermia gloves and slippers that I use during the infusions. I was confused by a discrepancy in their freezing instructions. When they got back to me, they told me that I am the first consumer to have ever contacted them. Usually, only clinics and infusion centers buy the products, for their patients. Well, I would prefer that my infusion center supplied these, but they don't. At any rate, they advised me to pack the gloves in dry ice, so Kathy bought both dry ice and regular ice the night before and we packed the chest. It was heavy.
For this visit, I wore a blonde wig with some hair clipped back demurely on the side, along with an outrageous tunic t-shirt and pair of stretch pants in lilac. It's outrageous because I wouldn't normally leave the house in something like that. The matchy-matchy color combined with the blonde hair just seemed to scream "Suburban Mom." My apologies to you suburban moms who no doubt have better taste than that; that's just what it looked like to me. I must say, though, it was comfortable.
Given that our appointment was at 8:30 am, it's only logical that we got into an exam room at 10 am. They couldn't find my medical file, so the nurse practitioner had to write everything down on a separate piece of paper, to add to the file later on. I like this N.P.; she is very compassionate. She asked how the last few weeks went for me and I listed what I could remember, with Kathy letting me know about the ones I forgot. The N.P.'s eyes just got wider and wider as she wrote everything down. I guess I haven't been feeling good!
She said that my blood counts look good, so that's a relief. There wasn't much she could do about the side effects, so we kept all the medication as planned. She told me to contact her directly if I had more problems. Then, it was off to the infusion center.
Last time, the infusion center staff asked me to make sure my appointment was scheduled for noon or earlier, just because they have administer the Taxotere so slowly on me and they want to finish by five. This time, I was able to get started at 11 am, which really worked out well.
My nurse was one I had met last time in passing. With her delightful Irish accent and her upbeat style, she's enjoyable to have as a nurse. She is the only one at the infusion center I've met who is familiar with the ice gloves. It sounds like when she was in Great Britain, they did more things like that as a matter of course.
I tried again to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, but all the Ativan and Benadryl they give me made me woozy, even with the dexamethasone. Regretfully, I gave up on the movie. I tried looking at an art book but none of it made sense to me. There's not a whole lot you can do during the infusions except nap, and I didn't want to do that and leave Kathy bored.
After 45-minutes with the hypothermia mitts and slippers strapped on me, Kathy removed them and set up the ice bags. It's really tricky to balance them on my feet and they kept falling off. After some frustrating moments, we decided that we need to get another set of mitts and slippers for subsequent infusions, or it's going to be miserable.
During the infusion, my buddy (nurse) from the Breast Care Center came upstairs to see what hair I was wearing. She told me that I look young normally but in the blonde hair, I look like I'm in my twenties! Laughing, she told Kathy that she better watch out. Who knew that a new hair color could have such a big effect? Okay, maybe you did, but I didn't.
Because we started the infusion early, I was actually able to finish by 3:30 pm. Wow! Aside from feeling a little woozy and having some strange abdominal cramps, I felt okay. Kathy and I decided to go to a discount fabric store in the city to look for fabrics for my stewardess book. We didn't find much of that, but they had a great sale on exotic beaded trims and...well, we kind of lost our heads. In a good way.
On a lark, we decided to go to another little discount fabric shop by her old house. That's 25 miles from San Francisco in a bad commute during rush hour (NOT on our way home) but we thought it would be worthwhile. We were right! My tummy still hurt and I would start sweating and turning pale, but who cares when you are having a shopping moment? We found all sorts of wild trims that were dirt cheap and then (be still my heart) it turned out that they were on sale, making them even cheaper than we thought! Woo-hoo!
We picked up dinner on the way home. I watched Biography on TV because they released a new version of the Johnny Depp one, with an extra hour of material. It was rather good, and I am picky. I was out like a light after that.
Today I had excitement because I lost the adhesive motion sickness patch that I stuck behind my ear on Thursday evening. I can't find it anywhere and I'm worried that it fell off someone where the cats could find it. Scopolamine is poison! I've been looking everywhere for it, in my bed, my clothes, my wig, the shower, my floor...ACK! I'm not sure if I should put on another one, but it seemed to help so much yesterday that I think I'm going to try it.
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