Day 9 First Chemo Round

Today has been a good day. I was awake until 2:30 a.m. (Monday night) due to the Dexamethasone that I had to take yesterday at my chemo session. It revs up the brain and so I spent some time organizing pictures and music on my computer.

The nausea has been kept at bay today by using the Prochlorperazine (supplemental nausea drug) but also by using a herbal tea that a friend dropped off yesterday. I'm cautiously optimistic that this will work over the next few days because I did not need to have the drug every 4 hours. It was already able to be extended. The tea also meets the requirements for liquid intake.

Today, I was restless. I wanted to be productive. I started organizing some of my "things" and then decided that my shrubs in the front garden needed a good trim. I was compromising in that I wouldn't rake all the trimmings up. I'd just put them back in the garden for compost. I got most of it done and ran out of energy. Oh, oh.....hubby is going to be some upset with me for doing this. Hmmmmm...... Then my neighours came home and while visiting with them and sitting on the ground to rest, my neighbour came over and finished the last shrub. We agreed that we would tell hubby that my neighbour did it all. I confess that I can't lie without feeling terrible about it. So while we enjoyed our dinner (which a good friend had made from her garden and froze for us), I confessed what had gone on. Of course, hubby had come home from work to find me vacuuming the kitchen floor. I believe his words were "I caught you!".

After much discussion, it was agreed that I can do some cleaning but not to totally tire and wipe myself out. Hubby recognized that I was bored today. I did manage to get all my liquid intake into me. The Liquid Intake Journal is helping me to track that. After dinner, we went for ice cream where I can justify that it had nuts and raspberries which will help to boost my white blood cells.....forget the other empty calories (smile). After our ice cream, we went for a lovely drive and discussed the vortex of emotions that we're experiencing.

Things happened very quickly this summer and we're both still dealing with the reality of the diagnosis at the same time as we are handling the treatment and side effects. It's a little overwhelming and hard to process. Tonight was a nice change.