Day one of chemo

Today we went to Michele's first chemo treatment. I will let her discribe how she/it felt tomorrow, but here is what went down...

We went to St. Joe's for our 10am appointment and Michele was in a pretty upbeat mood. Plus, she was looking rather cute.

We signed in and spent several minutes cracking each other up in the waiting room. The somber crowd around us appeared to be uninspired by our frivolity. A nurse, Patti, came to get us and began the tour... here are the bathrooms, there is the pantry stocked with goodies (ice chips, juice, crackers, etc.), and here is a room full of recliners with people getting chemo. I hate to describe these people as generally sickly looking, but...

Luckily, as first timers, we were shown to a private room with a bed and some privacy so that Patti could give us tons of info without interuption. It was apparently the best room and was referred to as "a room with a veiw" since the window looked out on a garden area. We found it amusing that in this garden, right next to the Cancer Care Center, there was an older gentleman enjoying a refreshing cigarette. Surreal.

Michele was happy to be getting started with her treatment, but still a bit sad that she had to endure it in the first place.

Patti sprayed on some numbing spray and plugged the IV into Michele's port, which she loves and is far superior to getting poked in the vein, and started to run saline. Then she pushed small syringes of Decadron, a steroid, and Aloxi which helps fight nausea for the next five days.

At this point Michele was given some ice chips to suck on. One of the side effects of the chemo drugs is the possibility of mouth sores. By sucking on the ice and slowing the blood flow to her mucus membranes while the drug is going in she can reduce the likelihood of getting these sores. Then it was time for the first real drug, Adriamycin. The bright red liquid was pushed in to the IV by hand using four separate syringes. This took less than an hour. Next, Patti hung a bag of the next drug, Cytoxan. It took about an hour for the bag to run.

While this was running we were twice visited by a man that we have come to call "Viking Mike". Mike is another chemo patient who had been, for the entire time we had been there, walking around and around the facility with IV cart in tow. Eventually he stop in and introduced himself by asking, "So what you got?" Michele, of course, answered, "Breast cancer... what you got?". Mike went on to describe his infliction as "Viking Cancer". That is, he couldn't pronounce the real name but only Scandinavian men usually get it so he figured it was viking cancer. Apparently there have only been five cases in Michigan and he is boastfully "number five". Truthfully he ended up being a pretty sweet guy and won our hearts by teaching us that a suitable replacement for the phrase "good bye" is a hardy "rock 'n roll".

That was pretty much it. I'll leave the rest of the story for Michele to tell. She has been kind of worn out tonight and had a migraine, but hopefully a good nights rest will make for an easier tomorrow.