Breast Cancer

During today’s visit to the cancer center I was sharing the waiting room with a little ol’ lady. She was obviously a cancer patient because there was no hair under her butterfly festooned hat. She sat in a wheelchair and was doing a crossword puzzle. When she wheeled across the room she didn’t use her arms she just kept working the puzzle and pulled herself by moving just her feet on the ground.

Donna called me down two doors to the lab area where she was waiting on Margo the nurse to come back. She showed me her numbers and they looked pretty good, but the doctor wanted to give her one more dose of the Nuepogen. When the nurse came back in she started to load up a needle while Donna tried in vain to bargain her way out of the shot.

As Margo was about to stick Donna’s arm the nice ol’ lady wheeled herself to the lab room door with her feet and asked if she could go yet. “Nope,” replied Margo, “I have to take blood for a test.” Our lady protested, “But you said I didn’t have to.” Sorry said Margo, the doctor forgot to write in the orders, but he just told me he wants it done. To which our butterfly hatted lady said, “Catch me if you can.” With a big smile on her face and a wink took a couple of shuffle steps forward moving all of 8-10 inches.

It took a full minute before the laughter died down so that Margo was composed enough to give Donna her shot.

The Neon is gone. I left it at the body shop and drove home in the freshly fixed up Miata. It still smells a little like paint on the interior. They did a nice enough job and they also took out the two small dings on the right rear quarter panel that I have put there over the years. As a side effect of the paint blending process, a couple of scratches disappeared as well. Spent a hour or so once I got it home putting all the junk back in the trunk (and glove box and center console…) While the Neon wasn’t a bad ride for a while, it sure is nice to get the car back.

The Nuepogen is gone. Donna had gotten one shot of it on Monday at the doctor’s office, the company nurse give her the next two on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday she went back for a blood test and the results showed that after Monday’s low White Blood Cell count of 2.5, the WBC was back in range at 4.5, but her platelets only rose from 1.0 to 1.8 and still remained a couple ticks below range. So she got neupogen dose #4. We had another oncology appointment this morning, with another blood test. The WBC was now over the top (10 is the upper limit of the range) at 11.4 and her platelets were up in the normal range too. She figured she was home free, nope, the doctor wanted her to get one more. The good news about that was, he then didn’t need to see her again until next Friday when she is scheduled for chemo treatment #2.

The hair is gone. Started to come out last night and there was lots more hair in the sink this morning. Tonight after supper we went out onto the back deck and I used my beard trimmer to cut Donna’s hair down to an 1/8 inch high. We then came back inside where I shaved her head. It may have been falling out, but it was still very thick. I used 4 Gillette Sensor3 razor blades. Now all she has is a five o’clock shadow. I didn’t want to try and make it baby bottom smooth because her scalp had taken enough of a beating getting to where I got it.

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.

Yesterday morning’s Chemo session went pretty well. Had a great nurse which really helped. The private suite made it a little better too. We never did watch a movie on the DVD player, but just kept the Today Show running in the background as a distraction.

So far Donna has been doing OK. They pump a little anti-nausea stuff in the IV and we were given 2 prescriptions and a 5 day sample pack of something else too. She took 1 dose of Ativan yesterday afternoon and one in the evening. She then took a Compazine before bed last night and this morning she melted one of the high dollar sample tablets of Zofran. She felt a little funky mid morning, but heated up a bit of soap and felt better, but so far no real nausea, just a little unsettled feeling in the stomach. Hey, we even had pizza for lunch. We plan on repeating this process for the next few days.

Neither one of us wants to brag to loudly about how she is feeling for fear of jinxing it. Tomorrow morning we are planning on a walk in the woods or maybe another short tandem ride…

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…