I’ve been telling Donna she looks great with the hair she has for a cou­ple weeks now. The last time we went in for hair­cuts, when the styl­ist was evening her hair out, she told her that she looked great and should go for it. But her hair was still shorter than it was when we cut it all off back in May and she wasn’t feel­ing com­fort­able with it yet. I thought for sure she was going to keep it cov­ered up until it was as long as before, which would be still another cou­ple months, but today, out of the blue, Donna decided to go sans bandanna/scarf/headdress.

She got one or two dou­ble takes, a lot of com­pli­ments and even a cou­ple hugs. But mostly she got a lot of peo­ple want­ing to feel her hair. It is dif­fer­ent than before that’s for sure, it is softer, a lit­tle darker, a lot more gray and way more curly. Peo­ple say the tight curls are tem­po­rary and even­tu­ally your hair returns to its pre-chemo shape, I’ll let you know…

You will be strapped to a table and your can­cer cells will meet their doom from blasts of my spe­cial death ray.

Because Donna’s skin was get­ting very red and sun­burned look­ing, with even a cou­ple of small blis­ters form­ing, her doc­tor decided to give her a slight break from the total breast irra­di­a­tion. So, since Wednes­day, they have been doing some of the seven sched­uled “direct on the spot where the tumor used to be” treat­ments. For these treat­ments, instead of just the reg­u­lar out­put they add some exten­sions with metal plates that act as lens to focus the beam on just one spot.

I went along with Donna for her radi­a­tion treat­ment again today and I watched them do the setup. I only took the one photo of the radi­a­tion machine, I’d have liked to taken one or two with Donna lay­ing there all ready to go, but because of the nudity the MPAA would slap me with an R-Rating.

Today I got to see first hand what those four lit­tle cross-hairs that are stuck on Donna’s chest are for. She asked the techs yes­ter­day if it was OK to bring me in and watch a treat­ment so I would know what was hap­pen­ing and they said OK. Plus then I could describe the process to her, because she has to remove her glasses and then can’t really tell what is going on.

Upon arrival she goes into a chang­ing room to swap her upper clothes for a hos­pi­tal gown. After a short wait Donna gets called back into the treat­ment room where she lays on the a table that has her per­son­al­ized molded foam pad on it. The pads are blue and everyone’s is hang­ing on a rack on the left side of the room like so many over­coats in a hat check room. The pad is prob­a­bly the same tech­nol­ogy as used in the cus­tom seats F1 dri­vers use. At work we use some­thing sim­i­lar for pack­ing things for ship­ping, a reac­tion between two chem­i­cals in a bag makes a foam that expands to fit tightly around an object.

Once she is sit­u­ated, they raise the table to shoul­der height and move it into the cen­ter of the room. Here is where another famil­iar tech­nol­ogy is used in a dif­fer­ent man­ner. On two walls of the room are some­thing resem­bling those fancy laser lev­els from Home Depot. Four bright green lines cross in the mid­dle of the room and then Donna is inched and nudged so that these lines cross exactly through the cross-hair stick­ers on Donna’s torso. She is told to hold still and the tech leaves the room clos­ing the one foot thick bank vault look­ing door behind her.

Out­side two tech­ni­cians sit watch­ing two video mon­i­tors on their left show­ing the inte­rior of the treat­ment room. On the right of their sta­tion are a cou­ple of com­puter mon­i­tors that show what looks like a main­frame style ter­mi­nal pro­gram (maybe DOS, but thank­fully not Microsoft Win­dows) that con­trols the “ray gun.” I don’t know what else to call it, but it is noth­ing like you might imag­ine a ray gun in a James Bond or Flash Gor­don movie to be. It is more like a giant dough­nut cut in half or a big “C” sur­round­ing the front of the table. One side has a lit­tle win­dow in it where the focused radi­a­tion beam will exit. A sim­ple mouse click and the treat­ment begins. The C-shape rotates a lit­tle, to get to the proper angle, so it is just hit­ting the breast and not any inter­nal part of the body. Lit­tle num­bers jump around on the mon­i­tors and 48 secs later it stops. Mouse click 2 sends the ray gun rotat­ing 190 degrees on it’s axis, so the win­dow is on the other side of Donna’s body aim­ing up and once again skim­ming the body and just blast­ing breast tis­sue. We count­down 48 more sec­onds, done.

The tech then opens the vault and calls in that they’re done. The table is retracted and low­ered so Donna can hop off. Back to the dress­ing room to dis­card the gown and get redressed. The whole thing takes less than 15 min­utes. Bye, see you tomorrow.

Only 29 more to go.

Yes­ter­day was Donna’s 4th and final chemo ses­sion. I went with her for her first and was going to go to all them, but she rather I just drop her off, come get her after­wards and then spend the after­noon with her. This worked for ses­sions 2 and 3. It was a good plan because for the first two ses­sions she didn’t start to feel bad until later in the after­noon. We even went out to eat lunch together those 2 days. But dur­ing chemo num­ber 3 she started to feel punk­ish part way through, so she asked if I’d come with her for the last one. To which I read­ily agreed.

We went out to eat break­fast at the New Moon as usual, she had a bagel and I got one of their giant muffins. We fin­ish the paper and headed over to the can­cer cen­ter. The first thing they before any­thing is take some blood and analyse it to see if it is good enough to be zapped down with the chemo drugs. Her num­bers came in great, every­thing was in the nor­mal range with even one a lit­tle high. The num­bers might even have been bet­ter than the ones that were from before the first ses­sion. Donna set­tled in the recliner, I got comfy in a chair beside her and he nurse got the IV started. First up in the IV is saline to keep her hydrated and then they start an anti-nausea agent before they get to the real juice. Donna has always brought some light snacks to nib­ble on dur­ing the treat­ments and this morn­ing she ate some water­melon pieces first thing.

Not two min­utes after fin­ish­ing the water­melon Donna reached for the trash can near the chair and threw it right back up. The nurse ran off to get some tow­els to clean up and I got her a wet paper towel to sooth her fore­head. Just about the time we got every­thing set­tled back down, Donna grabbed the can again and Mr. bagel joined the water­melon. This, all the while she is get­ting the anti-nausea med­i­cine in the IV! The nurse went off for a cou­ple more tow­els and brought back the doc­tor. The doc­tor came in and said, “OK, you are not feel­ing good we’ll post­pone the chemo until Mon­day or Tues­day.” Donna said, “NO WAY! I’m here let’s get the show on the road.” He said, “Maybe it is just nerves. If you want the chemo now, fine.” She said maybe it was nerves, but she really hadn’t been feel­ing well since Wednes­day and now that she had thrown up she felt pretty good.

After that inter­est­ing start, things went smoothly for the rest of the session.

Chemo treat­ment num­ber 3 for Donna was Fri­day and this one made the last one look like vaca­tion. The last two we were able to leave from the Can­cer Cen­ter and have a nice lunch, this time it was straight home for chicken & bar­ley soup thought­fully pro­vided by a friend. More soup for sup­per too.

The last two chemos caused a lot of stom­ach pain and low grade nau­sea that we kept pretty much in check with the 3 dif­fer­ent meds we were given pre­scrip­tions for. This time, in spite of try­ing to stay ahead of the nau­sea with med­i­cine, early Sat­ur­day morn­ing Donna was vis­ited by Mr. Upchuck, twice. Mid-morning on we didn’t feel ter­rific, but every­thing stayed down. We made a short trip out to the Can­cer Cen­ter for another Neu­lasta shot at 11:00AM and man­aged a slow walk around our 1 mile long block, but other than that the couch was her friend. This morn­ing we had a repeat per­for­mance of Sat­ur­day morn­ing, but once again the stom­ach set­tled for the rest of the day. She even felt good enough to get a cup of ice cream and walk a block of down­town Aiken tonight.

We have a cou­ple of things we would like to blame for being hit so hard this time. Four days prior to this chemo we spent 4 long days on the road to and from Vir­ginia which was tir­ing. By Thurs­day she wasn’t feel­ing good, stomach-wise, already and we went out to eat with the Miata Club to a not so great restau­rant. At least we hope this is what caused it, because we can con­trol them and the lead up to #4, and last, chemo will be less event­ful and less stressful.

So far the treat­ment we have received at the Car­olina Can­cer Insti­tute has been great, we like the doc­tor, any of the nurses so far have been great, heck we even like the lady in billing, but, and we are not sure where this is rooted, com­mu­ni­ca­tion about changes in appoint­ments have really been shoddy. The first involved resched­ul­ing of pre-treatment tests and the ini­tial doc­tors appointment.

Fri­day we got another sur­prise. After the first chemo treat­ment last week we were given two appoint­ment cards, one to come in at one week and have blood drawn and a sec­ond to come back in two weeks to see the doc­tor. The blood work was sched­uled for 8:30. See­ing as Donna was still tak­ing one Ati­van in the morn­ing and we have an unfa­mil­iar car, she wanted me to drive her over. No prob­lem, we both told our bosses that we were going to leave the plant at 8:15 and would be back in 45 min­utes at the latest.

When we checked in at the desk we were told that the doc­tor wanted to see us today too. After the blood was drawn, we asked where was the doc­tor? He is not here yet, but should be in about 15 min­utes would we wait. OK but not too much longer. We were seated in an exam room and we waited. We were just about to give up and leave when we heard his voice through the thin walls. OK, he’s here we’ll wait a cou­ple more min­utes. After wait­ing some more, all the while hear­ing him talk­ing, we got up to leave. As we passed by the chemo room we could see him talk­ing to patients. Had no one told him we were wait­ing? On our way out we told the nurse to resched­ule us an appoint­ment. She said could you wait, we can write you an excuse.

We didn’t have time to explain that it wasn’t that the excuse wouldn’t have been good or any­thing, it more the fact that we had already told folks we would be only gone a short time. Work has been won­der­ful about the missed time and they would have said, no prob­lem, had we come back later than we orig­i­nally men­tioned, but it was more the prin­ci­ple of it all. When had the doc­tor decided that he wanted to see us? Some­time dur­ing the week? And if that was the case why weren’t we noti­fied. Was it nor­mal pro­ce­dure to see the patient after giv­ing blood one week into chemo? If so, 1) they need to work on their descrip­tion of the appoint­ment because we both under­stood it to be just a blood draw and 2) they should sched­ule it dif­fer­ently so that the doc­tor is in the building.

Turns out the doc­tor does have a legit­i­mate rea­son to talk to us, Donna’s white blood count was a notch below the lower limit on Fri­day. The nor­mal range is 4.1 to 10.9 and her’s was at 4.0. Her pre-chemo level was only at 5, so the drop, while not huge, is still cause for some con­cern. The nurse left a long mes­sage on our answer­ing machine ask­ing if we could come in at noon­time to see the doc­tor or if not could we be there Mon­day at 3:ooPM. We of course couldn’t go in at noon because we didn’t get the mes­sage until 4:30PM when we got home. I guess the nurse didn’t get the hint that we were leav­ing because had to be back at work.

For the last cou­ple of weeks we have had an ele­phant in the room with us. The tests the oncol­o­gists ordered were not only to see if Donna could with­stand the rig­ors of chemo, which we were fine with, but there was also a darker rea­son for them, to see if the can­cer had metas­ta­sized to her bones or other places.

Today was truly “Good” Fri­day for us, as we found out that we deal­ing with noth­ing extra, just your run of the mill breast can­cer. She will still have 4 ses­sions of AC chemo, fol­lowed by the 6 weeks of radi­a­tion to make sure there is not one sin­gle can­cer cell left any­where in her body. Because her can­cer was ER+, after that she will be on Tamox­efin or sim­i­lar for 5 years to foil any more cancer.

Although there are a list of side effects as long as your arm for each of the two drugs she will be get­ting, Adri­amycin and Cytoxan, each per­son will have dif­fer­ent reac­tions to the med­i­cines. Hair loss is almost always a given, but we are phys­i­cally pre­pared with out scarfs, tur­bans and hair tid­bit. Nau­sea is another, but they have so many dif­fer­ent anti-nausea drugs out there we should hope­fully be able man­age that.

Right now we both have a pos­i­tive atti­tude about this and from all we have read, that is a big help in get­ting through this. Later when Donna is actu­ally deal­ing with the chemo and the atti­tude slips some, then it will become my job to prop it back up. I don’t have a def­i­nite plan on how to do that right now, I’ve con­sid­ered order­ing “Clown­ing for Dum­mies” from Amazon.com, but any other sug­ges­tions are welcome…

After our first con­sult with the Oncol­o­gist last week he out­lined a course of treat­ment to rid Donna of any can­cer. First up is sys­temic treat­ment with 4 rounds of adri­amycin & cytoxin 3 weeks apart. After that it is local­ized treat­ment con­sist­ing of 6 weeks of radi­a­tion blasted at her breast.

Both of the chemo drugs list hair loss as a side effect, so to get pre­pared for that even­tu­al­ity we vis­ited the lit­tle bou­tique at the Can­cer Cen­ter on Thurs­day. We had a about three hours to kill while wait­ing for the radioac­tive tracer to get dis­trib­uted through­out her body for a bone scan test. With the help of the nice lady that runs the place, Donna tried on a whole bunch of styles of tur­bans, scarves, hats and such. We picked out two neat tur­bans, two more dressier hat/bonnets for work, a nice lit­tle cot­ton beanie for sleep­ing and under ball caps. Although Donna liked the scarf option they seemed a lit­tle tricky to get look­ing right. The last item we picked out was a small hair piece 6″ wide with about 4″ of hair to sim­u­late bangs that give a more nat­ural look to the other items.

The shop keeper took a copy of Donna’s insur­ance card and said she’d call and see if our items would be cov­ered. We when back to the hos­pi­tal and fin­ished up the bone scan, etc. We then went home and had lunch. The woman called shortly there­after to say that our insur­ance didn’t cover those kinds of things. We told her we still wanted to buy the items and would come over later to pick them up.

Donna called at about 4 o’clock to see how late they were open and was told the store was clos­ing. Oh, well, no prob­lem we’ll come over and get them tomor­row she told the woman. Tomor­row was today, so we took a lunchtime ride over and guess what? Right, the store closed at noon on Fri­day. The woman at the front desk had our stuff in a bag for us, but couldn’t take a charge card.

I guess we’ll try again Mon­day at lunch. We will call before we drive over though, as with our luck, the place is prob­a­bly only open in the after­noons on Monday…