Round 1 over! DING, DING, DING!!!

What a WONDERFUL day!!!  Today went much better than I could have imagined.  We hit a few snags in our day, but overall, we did good and I feel great!

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a port placed this morning.  My doctor had her baby about a month early and is now out on maternity leave.  I went for our blood work this morning and straight up to Diagnostics Imagining for the port placement.  By the time my bloodwork arrived back, it was questionable as to whether or not we would proceed with either the port, chemo, both, or neither one.  I was running a low grade fever of 99.3 and my white blood cell count was up to 20.  Way above where they wanted it to be which is ideally between 5-9.  The surgeon paged my oncologist, Dr. Jenkowitz, and her covering Dr. returned the call.  He was at another office, did not have access to my charts, and did not know that Dr. Jenkowitz had prescribed Dexamethasone (a steroid) to help increase my white blood cell counts.  They thought an infection was brewing in my system, so they refused to put a port in today.  The hope is that this steroid will raise my white blood cell counts, fight infections, and the when the full effect of the chemo kicks in and knocks my immune system down between days 10-14, it will decrease my odds of getting sick. At least that is what I understood from the conversation.

After being refused a port, we were sent up to my oncologists office to discuss whether or not we would postpone chemo or continue as planned.  The decision was made to go forward with the chemo.

Prior to starting the chemo I finally got the results of the MRI scan.  It turns out the mystery in my L2 vertebra is most likely a small hemangioma in my lower back and coincidentally right near where I had surgery 7-8 years ago to remove a lypoma.   What a relief!!!!  It also turned out that the breast tumor hadn't changed much since my last office visit.  The covering physicians assistant got the same measurement as they did on my last office visit.  Now we hopefully watch it shrink!!!

About noon, we finally started treatment.  First the Herceptin, then steroids (because I got confused and missed my morning dose), then Benedryl, then Taxotere, and finally Carboplatin.  I seemed to tolerate all the drugs pretty well and even managed to get a brief nap in among all the beeping and blood pressure cuff pumping every 20 minutes.  The Benedryl made me very tired and has caused me to have the worst dry mouth ever!

We return in three weeks to get the port in place and for round two of chemo!  I get my hair chopped off tomorrow evening and will post pictures as soon as I can.  :)  A little nervous about it, but so excited.  I have been wanting to chop my hair short for quite some time.

Thank you again everyone for your support, love, and faith that we can and will beat this disease.  The meals have also been a HUGE help!!  Thanks Lisa, Stephanie, Jennifer, Anastasia, and Aunt Karen for the wonderful food!  Also, a huge thanks to Stephanie for stopping in to visit with us while we were waiting for my drug cocktail to be prepared at the pharmacy!  It was so wonderful to see you.  You're such an inspiration to me! 

Check back tomorrow for picture of a new do!