Neulasta not so bad so far

Yesterday I went to the hospital to get my Neulasta shot. Two options of getting it was on the back of my arm or on my tummy. I decided to get it on my tummy. It really didn't hurt so much. We were done in less than 5 minutes.

So far no bone pain, we'll see ...

By the way my eyes are MUCH better. Both eyes see at the same level, that makes reading and writing much much easier. I better get some work done this week, while the steroids last (actually I am not so sure if it is just steroids, I think the warm compresses and massages on my eye lids have helped together with artificial tears. My mouth started getting pretty dry also (another common side effect of the chemo), well at least this way I drink water.

My fatigue is definitely worse than the first time, nausea is also bothersome but I can still eat. I bet it is the combination of low red blood cells and accumulation of chemo drugs in my system. I managed to go on a walk with my sister and niece this morning so that was nice. We had a nice breakfast and now I am back in bed.

I feel so lucky that I can rest and do not need to worry about feeding the girls, doing laundry or other housework. Well, after tomorrow I will be halfway done with FEC also. Yuppiiiee!

oo-ooh, low ANC finally caught up

This morning we went in for both blood work and a visit with the oncologist, hopefully to be followed by infusion.

When they accessed my port (i.e. when they poked the needle into the port) it HURT! seriously it hurt so much I had tears in my eyes. This had not happened before. There have been sometimes where I would feel he poke but it was instantaneous and not that bad. This time the pain was quite bad from the moment it was put in, till for at least half an hour later. I don't know why.. I put on my EMLA cream, covered it with press and seal, just like always, oh well, at least there are only a few more pokes left and I will make sure I will put a lot more cream on this time.

When the Dr. came into the room, she said that my white blood cell count was pretty low, lower than their threshhold but that she was going to give this cycle of chemo anyway BECAUSE tomorrow I will be getting the Neulasta shot. This particular drug makes your body make more white blood cells so your body is not totally defenseless against infections during this periods of time. It may have the side effect of causing bone pain for 3-7 days, some people do not feel much, some people think about stopping the treatment due to it. But I am allowed to drug myself so we can keep the pain under control. Tomorrow 9:10 am.. I will let you know how it went.

Today after chemo I was feeling loopy - thanks to Ativan. So as soon as I got home, I laid down and apparently I slept for several hours. There is a little nausea and I am a little dizzy walking around so I am in bed unless I have to get up. For dinner I had cut up fruit and that felt good. I already took Zofran for the night, I even took a Claratin, because the nurses have this notion that taking Claratin the day before, the day of and the day after the Neulasta shot actually lowers the risk of bone pain. Hey that is easy to do, I sometimes take Claratin for my eyes anyway so why not?

On a good note, I am almost half way done with FEC, only two more. What really drives me nuts sometimes is not the nausea or loss of appetite or loss of taste or fatigue but rather worry/wonder about the different things that happen in my body and if they are linked to cancer. For example, this eye thing, is it really just dry eye? It seems to get better with regular drop use - as my oncologist said a brain tumor's effect would not fluctuate that much. Another thing: I had lost a few patches of skin/muscle that I had lost sensation/feeling of on the left side after the mastectomy surgery. Now it seems that some nerves are making connections, some areas of the mastectomy site seems more tender than others. There is one spot, (close to my sternum), that when touched actually feels like I am touching a region closer to my arm pit :) it is funny. The doctor's visits are good for these. I ask all these questions and most of the time she has good answers that usually sooth me.

It will be harder when the treatments are finished and I do not come back to the cancer center frequently - that will be an important time to be busy, to go to counseling and maybe even join a support group.

On a more positive note: I had been looking for quotes, or a few sentences that I could have printed under my picture for that "putting a face on cancer" project. and I think I came up with one. It something that Ada says and it makes me smile, and I totally agree with her, so here is the rough draft of what I am thinking:

Most days, usually out of nowhere my 4-year old says: "Today is the BESTEST day ever!". When I hear her I smile; I couldn't agree more.

I may put in a short few sentences about my diagnosis and what stage in progress I am. But I really want to keep it sweet and short.

Our former next door neighbors had a sign posted on their backyard shed that I appreciated as well it said: "These Are the Good Old Days"

Even though I had pretty good memories/experiences in the life I really prefer today (although the other day when we were looking for pictures on the computer, I came across pictures taken before February 21, and thought I careless life used to before my diagnosis, and I DID long for those days). In terms of future I am working on having dreams/plans for next year, and hopefully soon for even further into the future.

I am wishing you all the BESTEST weekend ever!

new chemo new side effects

I have been bad. I had not noticed that it had been 10 days since the last post. The good new is that I am in general doing pretty well.

Last weekend the nausea started to subside. On Sunday Dan and I left to collect beetles in Utah. For the last 6 years we had never gone on a trip just the two of us. So I was pretty excited - I thought of it as a mini vacation. I figured it would be mostly driving and spending time with nets in our hands, but even that is a luxury: driving in the car and not to have kids whining in the back or even staying in a hotel without having to spend most of the night awake to make sure the little ones do not fall of the bed and that we do not get kicked and elbowed by them :).

Sunday we left home after 3 pm. We drove till 8:30 and finally found a spot where there were larvae on tamerisk and collected some. It was 10 pm by the time we found a hotel to stay.

The next morning after breakfast I felt that my eyes were not normal (the pink eye thing had been gone for a week but it came back as soon as the steroids wore off). Not only were they really itchy and scratchy but I had blurry vision also. I called and made and appointment with the eye doctor and we left the hotel to collect more beetles. During the drive I had trouble reading the road signs and I started freaking out. Is it a stroke? (having the port is great for the infusion but it can sometimes cause blot clots so it can also be scary) Do I have a brain tumor?Should we had back home right away, should I go to the ER at the nearest town? Thankfully Dan kept calm and I tried to meditate, keep my mind busy with other things, and towards the afternoon it was a little better. But instead of being a fun day I turned it into a a moody and not such a fun day. We decided to start driving back that night so we would be closer to home and on Tuesday I felt much better, my eyes were almost back to normal - so my mood was better.

The eye doctor looked at my eyes. He thinks that my eyes are/were so dry that my cornea had trouble focusing the lens. It turns out we have these glands that make an oily substance on our eye lids, so everytime we blink the oil that is produced is layered over our eye to keep that tears from evaporating easier. Well, he said that my eye lid glands were clogged/ inflamed so they were not producing that oil as they should, so my eyes were drying out easier. So now, twice a day I do warm compress over my eyes, massage to get the gook out of the glands and clean with diluted baby shampoo. Several times a day, I use artificial tears to keep my eyes hydrated. They still get pretty itchy and scratchy sometimes. My vision is better but it is not easy to read (this is the longest time I have spent typing/reading on the computer screen since last weekend). I hope that it will get better soon.

Otherwise I feel almost normal. The fatigue isn't that bad, I started having an appetite since Monday.. so I really shouldn't complain. I think I just will have to learn to deal with this chemo. With Taxol it was the neuropathy, with FEC it is nausea and dry eyes (the funny think is that in these cases your eyes sometimes overproduce tears, so I will have tears running down my cheek but still have my eyes dry).

I will go in for the second FEC next Friday, so it is actually pretty awesome that I get to spend 10 days or so feeling normal. On Friday they will check the blood cells again. Keep your fingers crossed that I will have enough white blood cells so they can give me the chemo - there is actually a drug, Neulasta, that they inject to amplify the white blood cells, but I am trying to do without it if I can. They say that neulasta can cause bone pain but the good thing is that it would keep my white blood cell count at a reasonable level. Then again I feel weird having chemo to kill "fast diving cells" and then getting a drug to make a certain type of cells divide rapidly.

OK, I better go sleep now, it is almost midnight. Night night, don't let the bed bugs bite!

Day 4 -update

This morning at 7:30 am I got the second dose of 5-FU. As premeds I got 10 mg of steroids (just like Friday). The good thing about the steroids is that they make my pink eye go away - and minimize the side effects of the chemo of course. I woke up with some nausea so I took Zofran, and it helped. The infusion was quite short and easy, we were done just over an hour. After coming home I took a nap. Nausea is there but not so much that I feel like vomiting, a lot like what I had when I was pregnant, a nagging feeling in the background. I have eaten little meals and spent most of the day in the bed. I hope that by tomorrow I will start feeling better and can start moving around more.

Day 3 - so far so good

On Friday afternoon I got my first round of FEC. This is a combination of 3 drugs, 5-FU (a base analog), Epirubicin (an anticancer antibiotic - a DNA intercalating agent) and Cytoxan (a DNA alkylating agent). Basically they all damage the DNA, with the hopes that the cells that need to replicate their DNA will die and that most of those cells are the cancer cells. They each have their own side effects. For example one has a lifetime dose of Epirubicin that they can take because it is toxic to one's heart, another can cause bladder bleeding, nausea/vomiting etc. The blood cells counts (both white and red) are expected to fall around 10-14 days after infusion - well those cells DO divide frequently, don't they.

Well, right now it is Sunday afternoon and I am doing fine. I spent about half of yesterday in bed, on and off, and today I took a nap - I am not sure how long it has been, but it is mostly precautionary resting. I have been told that today (on day 3) I would feel the fatigue and possibly the nausea, and would feel not so great for a few days. I am sure that I am jinxing myself right now, but if it stays like this, it is not too bad :).

I am sure the medication I am taking is helping a lot. All of the $420 worth pills (Emend) are gone as of this morning. I am also taking Zofran in the morning and at night. And there are 3 more drugs sitting on my night stand if I need them.

Tomorrow early in the morning I will go back to the cancer center for the second dose of 5-FU.

In the morning we started setting up the trampoline that my family got the girls for their birthdays but was interrupted by a monsoon rain storm. I want to jump on the trampoline when it is done :)

I hope everyone's weekend was great,

Nice break

Last week I did not get chemo for the first time in 12 weeks. It was AWESOME!!! On Friday we took a short family vacation down to south-west corner of Colorado. Deniz wanted to see the Four Corners (where a person could stand on four states - Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico) at once, Ada wanted to see a ghost town.

So on Friday we drove down to Four Corners had our pictures taken, then we stayed at the lodge inside the Mesa Verde National Park. Dan and I had been to Mesa Verde National part just over 10 years ago, and had liked it. Staying within the park was nice. On Saturday we did one guided tour of one of the cliff settlements and one self guided one, and then drove to Durango. Our hotel had a swimming pool so the girls and I took a dip, but it really wasn't a great pool, too much chemicals in the water, it smelled pretty strong. For dinner we met a good friend. And then on Sunday morning we started our drive back, stopped at a ghost town just before Ouray. It was raining pretty bad - and believe it or not the temperature was 47F in some places. Thankfully we got about 15 minute break in the rain, jumped out of the car, toured a few of the houses and got back in the car before getting soaked. When we got back to town it was 100F!!

So it was great that we could cover all that we wanted to cover. I was pretty energetic the whole trip, although I did take a nap after getting home on Sunday afternoon. When we asked the kids what was their favorite part about the whole trip, Ada's response was "sharing the umbrella with my dad" and Deniz's response was " to jump from one bed to the other". Well, I guess we could have achieved those moments without leaving the town, but I am sure they will remember this trip when they are older.

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

The view from where we stopped to have a picnic lunch:


Deniz with one limb on each state:


Ada with her native American hair clips:

Cliff palace :

Chilling in the shade:
lots of ladders to climb:
The houses in the ghost town were still in great shape:

Yesterday was 4th of July, so the girls enjoyed the fireworks at night, and there were a LOT of them in our neighborhood. I LOVE long weekends, don't you?

This morning I saw my oncologist. We will start the next round of chemo on Friday, I will have half of a drug dose on Monday. They prescribed an anti-nausea drug, when I went to the pharmacy they said that it needed pre-authorization from the insurance company, otherwise it costs $440 for one treatment (3 pills) - I sure hope I get it preauthorized :)

I will try to get in an update for y'all over the weekend. New drugs, new side effects, new routine.. (one of the side effects is that I will pee RED for the first two days, the side effect of another drug is bleeding in the bladder :) )

Cheers!