Round Two

I carefully packed my new pink bag with my soft cuddly white and pink bubbles blankie, my new soft socks, my dot to dot book, the puzzle, the sudoku book, my iPod, and a novel to read just in case. I tucked a full bottle of fresh water in the pocket, climbed into my soft comfy sweat pants and zippered hoodie, grabbed a royal blue baseball cap and a warm snuggly bright yellow skull cap, and headed out the door at 8:00 AM.

As I climbed out of the car at Wilmot Cancer Center, Kiel said "Try not to die!" I flipped back "Not planning on it. I'll call when I'm ready for the ride home." I stepped through the doors, surprised at how cheerful and peppy I felt. No trace of last night's fear, no sense of being in any compromised state, no sense of impending trouble. My prayer warriors must be working overtime, thank God!

First, I see the both my oncologists - the lymphoma and rectal specialists. I chat with the nurse and hand her my symptom log I had kept to track the progress of the first round. Not bad. Though the immune system levels dipped low, overall, I had done very well and tolerated things fine. They were pleased with my progress, laying to rest my concerns of the night before.

We discuss an antiviral treatment to prevent further mouth sores. I am delighted to find a way to prevent that again. The rest of the symptoms I can deal with - a few headaches, a bit of nausea and tiredness, a bit of hand and foot tingling, some aches and pains. They draw blood from my port, and send me to the Infusion Center.

The process is similar to the first time, except this time they give me only the drugs for the Rituxan first and save the drugs for the chemo for later so they won't wear off. I was happy to discover that I didn't get a headache until they gave me the stuff for the chemo drugs so I didn't have the headache all day. Bonus! I still had some reaction to the Rituxan, so we had to still go slowly and check blood pressure every half hour. I had some trouble with foot tingling again, so they finally gave me IV benadryl which make me nearly pass out, but the feeling passed.

It took the full six hours to do the Rituxan and another hour for the chemos to be administered, plus an hour of saline flushes in between. Meanwhile, this round, I spent the first few hours doing my dot to dots and working on the puzzle while listening to my Hymns Triumphant CD on my iPod. That was uplifting. Then two of my friends came to visit with me. Diane and I caught up on the graduations and proms her kids had, and laughed over pictures. We chatted about stuff, and she taught me a game called Sequence which will be fun to play again. Next time she promised to bring Craniotomy.

Just as she had to go to work, Sherri came and we chatted while I worked through the benadryl issue. We are very excited about getting a new instrument for the church and are planning to go check it out Thursday evening before choir rehearsal. After she had to go for a meeting, I worked on the puzzle, getting the entire border done before I had to pack it in.

Not a bad day, but I felt loggy and full of toxic ammunition which I trust will go to work gently killing off only the bad cells and leaving the good ones alone. Especially I am praying for a cessation of the invasion of the bone cells and the bone marrow issues to reverse.

I will say that when I finally arrived home at 7:30 PM, I was ready for sleeping! One more treatment down - I am a third of the way there. Next time I will be able to say I am half way. That will be a good marker.