Checking in on Amy

It is the tail end of the long weekend. The sun has been shining every day which I did not expect based on last week's forecast. Even though it has been cool out the sun has tricked me into believing that spring is really here. I guess we'll see. :) On Saturday Rick learned how to give me the injection to help my blood cells grow. It was easy and I couldn't even feel it. I stayed hooked up to the IV hydration just for a couple of hours Saturday before deciding to detach myself and just drink tea and water instead. I'm sure I will be grateful for the hydration in the future if I'm having trouble eating or drinking, but at this point being hooked up to the pump just made me feel like a sick person. (And yes, I know that I AM a sick person, but I am definitely capable of drinking my prescribed 2L of fluids at this point.) I continue to feel pretty good, though the fatigue really kicked in the last couple of days. Yesterday I was feeling really tired and was in a bit of...

Well friends, two new chemical elements have entered this body, so my collection continues to grow. Yesterday morning I had my MRI bright and early. It went well; I'm not more claustrophobic than average, but mine was done lying face down so I actually had no sense that I was in a tiny tube. It was noisy of course, but not too bad. The contrast dye they use for that test contains the element gadolinium, which even as a chemistry teacher I don't really know much about. It sits way down low in the periodic table in an area we don't focus much on in high school (except a bit in grade 12 when we look at electron configurations), but I guess it's good for taking a closer look at tumours! My chemotherapy treatment took less than four hours, and the subsequent visits will be even shorter. I got three different drugs: Herceptin, CARBOplatin, and DOCEtaxel. The Herceptin is not chemotherapy, but just an antibody that blocks HER2 receptors on my cancer cells. They give the Hercep...