fisrt day of chemo

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09/18/2011
First day of chemo
8:ooam I am slightly nervous when Cher Schmidt pulls into the driveway to pick me up and take me to my first treatment. We make a quick Start bucks run. Nothing like a toasted Chonga bagel with cream cheese and a, Venti Frap. Green Tea with extra raspberry shots to get ur day going. WE then arrive 30 minutes early even with traffic. I get checked in and they take me back into a room and I meet with Chris Kostel one of the clinical research nurses. We spent 30 minutes going over paperwork and the dos and don’ts in the infusion room guidelines. Then a nurse practionier comes in and does a quick head to toe body check and clears me for my chemo treatment. I normally would see my oncology Dr. but he was booked so I saw her.
Then they take us back out to the waiting room where I now have to resign in and pay to go into the infusion room. Nerves are really flippin pout now as I know what is coming. They call my name and here we go. We walk into the infusion room and it’s a long room but not set up the way I expected it to be. Its set in to like a bunch of quad areas in a long row with a big nurses station at the end of the room. We turn at the nurse’s station and enter another room of quads and another nurse’s station.
..... This is my area

..... This is the counter you can't touch
do to the chemo bags are set here.

this counter divides my area from the next persons area. there is a small walk way inbetween and then another set of these to form a quad. There was 4 quads in the room I was in and one nurses station. I had the choice of 3 chairs to sit in my quad. One with the window to my side, 2 facing the windows of intersate. I chose the one in the back with the chair facing the room not the window. Hellooooooooooooo people watcher here. My nurse came over to get my IV set up in my port on my chest.
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The Iv is set up then she tells me she will let pharmacy know I am hooked up to IV, and that the pharmacist will be in to talk to me.
So the pharmisist and a student in traning come over and discuss akk my currant meds and my migrains. Well some of the meds can cause migraines so we really talked about that a lot. What we will do incase i do get one. We then went over all the meds i will be talkin when I get home. They leave and about 10 minutes later my nurse comes back with a mini IV bag of steroids. They explain this will be to calm the body down before the chemo. Now my nurse comes back with this chemical labled bag labled number 1
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I tried to turn these picts multi times and it wont so deal with it lol



this is my first bag of chemo.... My nurse comes back preps the ag then comes over kneels besides me and reads me the bag you know my name , DOB, health record number, name of meds, doseage. then hangs it after I ok it. She said they would slow drip this med for 30 minutes check my heart rate ect then turn it up if not reactions.My nurse came back to check on me and Well this started to cause a headache. I wasn't sure if this was due to not really eating, nerves or the meds. So Cher went down to the mini cafiteria and got me some cheese meat and chips. This was just what I wanted too. The nurse gave my two tylonel. Maybe the both kind of helped but I still had it after the first bag. So here came the second back of chemo.
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oops upside down it wont let me change these ( very frustrating sorry guys )

So this second bag of chemo made my nose burn liek right after sneezing you might get the pressure and burnning feeling. Well I had that for about 30 minutes till they got me 2 sutifed and it kind of took away the burn but not the pressure.
Well once the chemo bags are emptied they took out the port line. cleaned up the area and then sent me to the pharmacy top pick up all my home meds.

This is where I have to give koodos to a great frined for takin time out of her family, and work, schedule to come from Seattle to just sit there with me durring this boring time. What a great friend. Thanks Cher Schmidt!
I was hungery when we left so we stopped at Muchas Gracias got a qusadillia then we stopped at Utopia so she can talk to Danika. When we made it home it was 3:45pm just after Nate got home and We said our good byes to Cher and I went straight down peed and then changed right in to pj's and went straight to bed. But I had to get paper work in order and all but then laid down even though I couldn't sleep. ( that damn steroids) My tummy don't know what it wants to do. I have been sneezing a lot now though I noticed. I am just week, calves are starting to cramp, can't sleep.

Colton came down curled up in bed with me then I had to have nate wke him up and go eat dinner come to find out he had a tummy ache and didnt feel good ( great this may not be good )