The Waiting is Over...

for the first step anyway

Chemo and radiation start Monday.  

These are really gorgeous flowers by the way and sent to us from some very nice friends who do so much for us already.  I am really enjoying them.

Anyway, I am off to a good start this morning  The first thing I did (after going back to bed after seeing Lynette off at 5), was put a load of wash in.  It wasn't until it was half done and I was doing the 'get ready for the day' part of my morning, when I remembered I hadn't put any soap in.  I've got chemo brain and I haven't even started yet!

I'm feeling better today.  Jim is coming home this evening after being gone since Tues. My scans are done for awhile, and someone is coming to visit later and that always cheers me up.

I had that PET scan yesterday and that was another different thing.  It was a radioactive scan, too, done at the Kearney Imaging Center.  The same man injected me as for the bone scan but he was better today, just did his job and answered my questions.  Sort of makes me wonder if he realizes what I have is serious and he'd better not joke around, That is part of what made me a little bit off yesterday.  Either that, or he was off. Or I have too much imagination.  

Which is entirely possible, err... probable, err...downright true.

Since it is radioactive and all sorts of precautions have to be taken, I go to this little room with a recliner in it, marked "RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL", (I mean the door of the room, not the recliner), and have a needle with a line put in inside my elbow, like a short IV, into which he put saline, the the injection, then more saline.  The injection was in a large heavy looking metal syringe that was probably lead lined for everybody's protection but mine.  Then he left me in a semi-darkened room for an hour with instructions to do nothing, no reading, no cell phones, no texting.  Lucky for me I forgot my cell at home.
So, I thought, (too much imagining here), I told myself stories, I wondered what time it was, I counted seconds, and then a nurse came in to ask how I was doing, and "it won't be long now," so I counted some more.  I was going to count 10 minutes but I got sidetracked and pretty soon she came back in and took me to the scanning room to put me in the usual scan position: feet up to the end of the table, a pillow for my head, one under my knees, straps to hold up my arms and a nice warm blanket.
I was hoping I'd have a nap during one of these times, but it didn't work out.  I spent the 20 minutes going in and out of the big doughnut looking scanner thingys wondering how they worked.
Then I left to find my ride waiting and had a nice lunch out!
Thank you very much!
I was starving.  I spent the 24 hours before the scan eating a high protein/low carb diet, and the morning, eating nothing.
And I came home and tried to have a nap while Lynette was having one, which I eventually did and lucky she woke up at 6 or we would have missed our evening activities.

And, it's true, I am starting chemo on Monday.  I called the chemo Dr. last week for something, reassurance probably, and the nurse says, "well, we're seeing you on Monday anyway".  Oh, really??  Well, I hope they were going to call me.  So, the first day, Monday, I will to go Platte Valley Medical Group for a check up, then the long day of chemo with Cisplatin, which is the really scary one, and VP-16 which is the one which will cause me to lose my hair, I think, I can't imagine it, until it happens.  They are doing the chemo there under the watchful eye of the doctor in case of any reactions.  Then I trot over to the Cancer Center for the radiation.  The next two days, I will do the VP-16 at the Cancer Center followed by the radiation, and that will just take the morning.  Three weeks later, we repeat, but I don't know if I will have the long first day at the Cancer Center or Platte Valley.  All this time, though, I will be going to radiation, every day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks.  I don't know what will happen, but I've been listening to other people and reading, but I won't really know, until it happens.
I was reading my cousin, Michelle's blog yesterday.  She blogged through her second time around with cancer and I wondered what she felt like in chemo.  The best case scenario, is a few days of doing nothing and that helped her more than trying to get anything done.  I find myself imagining all sort of horrors to have to deal with, that's what happens when you read the fine print, and the doctors have to tell you every known side effect even it it hasn't happened to anyone yet.
(Well, I suppose it's happened to somebody or they wouldn't know about it.)
Anyway, expect the worst and hope for the best, as they say.
Maybe it won't be as bad as you think, etc., etc.
Well it will be what it will be, and I'll deal with it.  I've found that realities don't scare me nearly as much as my imagination.

And for those of my followers who are Anne fans, I remembered this today:
From Rilla of Ingleside about Walter,
"Realities never scared him--only his imagination could do that."