Matchbox Twenty - I Wish the Real World Would Just Stop Hasslin' Me

Ok Everyone,

Yesterday was Chemo #20 and man do I have a story. But first, let me explain...
As you can imagine and as my good friend Dave so eloquently put it on yesterday's blog: 
"Ironically we cancer patients want to get through these treatments according to the prescribed schedule for maximum efficacy - the protocols are designed with a schedule that sets dosing and cycles of treatment to maximize/optimize their results.  My attitude from day one has been let's go....full dose...manage the side effects as best as can be but stick with full dose to optimize the results.  Kill the beast...do their job."
(http://davidbenjaminbrown.blogspot.ca/)

This has never been so true for both of us. For him because he is so close to the end of his treatments and wants time to recover a bit before his baby arrives in November, and me because all I can think is now my tumours are growing and I hate it. Delays are not an option because I have already had three months of treatments that did NOTHING. So I suffered through 6 chemotherapy sessions and their side effects for NOTHING. So now that we are adding the effective portion of my cocktail back in, I was quite psyched up for chemo yesterday. Until I got there and saw the look of shock on the receptionist's face. Turn's out Dave and I have had a similar experiences this week - being turned away for our regularly scheduled appointments, although for very different reasons. Unfortunately, Oxaliplatin takes 2 hours to infuse and the total time required for the full treatment in 5 and a half hours. I was scheduled at 1pm yesterday so the clinic rescheduled me for 9:30am. Problem being that even though they called twice, I didn't recognize their phone number (it came up as a "private number") and therefore ignored it as I was so busy on the phone on Tuesday with friends and family discussing my CT results. So one of the nurses came out to tell me that they would have to push my treatment to Friday at the earliest. And honestly, I burst into tears. I felt so stupid for not checking my messages and felt like it was my fault. But, all I could think was this canser is GROWING, and I don't want to wait another couple of days to nuke them. Add to that that my next appointments in Saskatoon are already booked, my flights are booked, my rental car is booked, my family and friends have made plans around those dates. I had already taken the required anti-nausea meds and used the last of the special bandages I use after applying numbing cream to my port. So it was just bigger than me. While she was in the other room trying to reschedule me, I started weeping (very quietly) and expressing all these concerns to Tim. Made quite a spectacle of myself actually. I could feel the sympathetic eyes of all the other patients on me while Tim was trying to calm me down and make me see that it was just a blip. Unbeknownst to me, at this point our very sweet receptionist (whose name is either Susan or Donna, I'm not sure thanks to chemo brain - Barb B., can you help me on this one? Pretty young lady with black hair and olive skin.) went back and explained the story to the chemo nurses. And they came to my rescue, offering to work an hour of overtime so I could get my treatment as planned. Of course my first reaction was no, I didn't want to ruin anyone's dinner and upset their work-life balance and the guilt got the better of me. Sooooo....I started crying harder. But my chemo nurses, who all grabbed me and gave me a big hug, and said "S**T Happens Barb - Just get in the bed and we'll get you going", saved the day. A special shout out to Bruce who stayed late to take care of me without a single complaint. And Janice and oh jeez, it's happening again - I want to say Lynn or Leigh - both ladies were so compassionate and funny, that I soon got over the tears. In fact, Nurse "L" walked into my area wearing a huge pair of over-sized glasses and had me howling in about 10 seconds. Unfortunately, we didn't get a pic of her wearing them, but she made me put them on...and hence this very sexy photo:

Hawt, huh?

But really, not nearly as awesome as this:

What a trooper!

Then, Tim started harassing me by aggressively taking multiple unsolicited photos of me with his iPad:

This is me playing along with Tim's shenanigans...

This is me looking to see who is watching us...

Smile dissipating...

Note the purse lips - patience wearing off....

The standard eye roll - Anastasia Grey would be proud...

And finally the bird that ended it all!

To be honest, he took at least 30 pictures in the span of about 60 seconds and was sweet enough to delete the ones where the double chin was front and centre. He did HOWEVER keep the ones where my eyes were crossed and where I was looking completely stoned, and I am sure those will be circulating among our friends before too long. Jerk-store.

Tim had to leave to get some work done and take the kids to swimming, so my dear friend Erin drove in to spend the last couple of hours with me and drive me home. I had a brain-fart and forgot to take some pics of her, so here is an oldy, but goody:

As you can see, she is absolutely hideous. Ha! I think that my fellow male patients thought they had died and gone to heaven when she walked in.  Wouldn't be a bad way to go, I'm sure if anyone were to ask their opinion.  We had an awesome visit, and I am pretty sure having her there was a big reason for the fantastic care I got from Bruce and his willingness to put in some over-time! Seriously? How many 30-somethings do you think they get in that place? And even fewer cuter than us. Toot-toot.

The good news is that my oncologist popped in for a chat and to answer some questions for me while Erin was there. I expressed my concern about waiting another three months for a CT Scan to see if the Oxaliplatin will work again, when the tumors have doubled in size in the past three months  - so I asked if they double in size AGAIN, am I screwed? And he said no. Whew. Then he said we have to give it time to work and the fact that they had progressed and progressed at the rate they did, was unsurprising to him. Ok, that's great but I wish someone had warned me. Anyway, he said if it doesn't work or if the neuropothy gets progressively worse, we will just switch me from FOLFOX to FOLFIRI - the next step in treatment that doesn't cause neuropothy or hair loss. Whew. Unfortunately I didn't have the forethought to ask why it is the second step - is it more or less effective and what are the expected side effects? Dumb-Dumb. Tim had to count down backwards from 10 when I told him that I didn't ask these very basic questions. Oopsy. I blame  it on the chemo-fog. Good thing is that I see my SK oncologist in less than two weeks. A little shout-out to Erin for purposely refocusing the end of the conversation with the oncologist to the comment about him being unsurprised about the recent growth. Made me feel a tonne better, thank you Lady.

One more pic - just for bragging rights:

That's right my friends! The Roughriders are finally playing like we all know they can and the win against the Argos was one of the highlights of my weekend! Then Tim and I watched "Faith of a Nation" - a documentary on the Rider's "13th Man" and how it came back to bite us on the ass in the 2009 Grey Cup final. Which I watched with Erin in Milton. And which also ended up with me crying and demanding a green shot to numb the pain. These days I rely on Ativan for that! Ha!

Thanks for tuning in folks,
Take care.