with thanksgiving over, it was back to the normal schedule for Week 15. my quest for new drinks has brought ginger ales and root beer and lemonade into my beverage rotation, which is a nice change of pace. the weird stomach issues continue, and i expect they will be with me through all of chemo. i have learned that it is worst from saturday evening through sunday evening (regardless of menu or diet), but knowing is nice? i guess?

to be honest, not a whole lot interesting happened during the week, so i thought perhaps i would take you on my usual chemo journey. on thursdays, i generally wake up around 7:00-7:30am (depending on my appointment time), shower, and head downstairs. i take my prescription tube of lidocaine cream and glob some on to my mediport area to get that numbing action going, then cover it with some good ol' Glad press and seal, as recommended by my doctor, to keep the cream in place and off my clothes. as i have said before, the press and seal works surprisingly well on human skin, which is a weird thing to say. then i eat some breakfast, we pack a cooler for my DIY cryotherapy (two cryomax ice packs for my hands, and two specially designed socks with inserts for frozen gel packs), and andy and i are off to the oncologist's office. (side note: all of my care is being handled through ohio health's riverside methodist hospital / bing cancer center. though the oncologist's office is at a separate off-site location, it is all still officially through riverside. i thought it was weird at first, but it's actually nice to not have to deal with hospital traffic and parking).

after arriving at the oncologist's office, we check in at the front desk. all the usual insurance and address verifications and copay, and then i am given a yellow sheet with my current appointment information on it. i bypass the normal blood draw department and continue down the hall to the infusion room, where i drop off my yellow sheet at the door, and we sit and wait for a few minutes. when they call my name, i am led into the infusion room, which is lined with stations around the outside of the room with recliners, IV drip poles, and infusion pumps. whoever my nurse is that day leads me to one of the recliners, and we begin the blood draw process. since i have a mediport, the chemo nurses do this instead of the regular blood draw department, which makes the initial setup more complicated, but the rest of the process far easier. the nurse peels away and removes my press and seal, then wipes off the numbing cream and cleans the mediport area. then she (they are all women nurses at this office) will give me a count of three and insert a special needle into the mediport (which hasn't hurt yet -- thanks, numbing cream!). the needle leads to a tube, probably about five inches long, through which she then runs regular saline to make sure my mediport is clear and working properly, and then my blood draws are done from/through this tube. i don't know how many vials of blood they take, maybe two or three? i don't really watch.

i am sent back to the front desk with my yellow sheet of paper, while my blood is sent for immediate testing in-house, which will show whether my body is ready for another round of chemo yet. then we sit and wait for a few minutes until my name is called, and a different nurse takes me back into a typical doctor's office room for height/weight/blood pressure/pulse checks. i change into a gown and dr. m shows up and does some tumor measurements (or, at least, she used to... as of this week, she said there is nothing she can even really measure, as it all feels like normal breast tissue from the outside at this point -- a good thing!), she answers any questions i have, gives any updates or scheduling needs, and clears me and my blood work for chemo that day.

then it is out of the gown and all the way back down the hall, past the front desk, to drop my yellow paper at the infusion room door, and sit and wait for a few minutes. when my name is called, i am generally led back to my original recliner from earlier, though sometimes it is different. first up is the pre-chemo medications. at this point, that tube hanging out of my mediport is now hooked up by a nurse to more tubing, which is sort of run through the infusion pump, and that tubing is hooked up to saline and whatever medication i am getting at that moment, which are hanging out on the IV pole. nowadays, i am getting benadryl (to prevent any allergic reactions) and dexamethasone (a corticosteroid, used in my case for anti-nausea), which i believe i get at the same time, and takes about twenty minutes to complete (signaled by the infusion pump beeping, which wakes me up from my benadryl nap). this is then followed by pepcid (for those lovely indigestion and heartburn side effects), which also takes about twenty minutes. to keep neuropathy at bay, i am supposed to use my DIY cryotherapy fifteen minutes before and after the taxol treatment, so i begin using the ice packs on my hands and feet during the pepcid drip.

after the pepcid but before the taxol, i generally take a bathroom break, because when i'm all hooked up with the tubing, i need to drag the IV pole and infusion pump around with me... and it's generally best not to be dragging chemo drugs all around the room, just in case. also, i'm getting INFUSED WITH FLUIDS ALL MORNING LONG, something's gotta give. then it's back into the recliner, the pepcid drip is switched out for the taxol drip, i kick my feet up, and i watch colbert on andy's ipad, since my range of activities is greatly reduced due to all the ice packs. after about an hour, the infusion pump beeps when the taxol is finished. the nurse unhooks all the drips from the tubing, and the tubing from me, and the needle from my mediport (which is usually the only time i feel discomfort from that area, since the numbing cream has long worn off). i hang out for another fifteen minutes to keep the cryotherapy going, and then we pack up the ice packs, and are out of there, usually well before noon. a combination of errands/lunch may happen, but at some point we make it home, and i am glad to nap on the couch for a couple of hours.

and there you have it. welcome to a day in my chemo life! not terribly exciting, but perhaps illuminating and/or interesting... pulling back the curtain on mysteries you likely never thought about fifteen weeks ago. i know i hadn't. but here we are! let's do this.