Have you ever noticed that as soon as you make an appointment to get your hair cut, your hair looks awesome until the day of the appointment? Maybe that’s just me?

Well, this week, as I’ve worked towards chemo that I asked the nurse, “what are we talking about on losing the hair, like a 90% chance it will happen, or just, it will happen.” Nurse: “It will happen”  Asking other nurse, so when do people usually lose the hair, “Around day 20.” So yeah, before the next infusion thing, I’ll need to figure out the wig thing.  And I have some lovely friends who have offered to knit me hats, which is super helpful, because I can knit, but all I have ever had patience to figure out is a scarf. But these week I’ve had more compliments on my hair than I’d had in weeks… evidently it knows that it’s days are numbered.

So yesterday was an interesting day. Showed up, gave some blood, they had a hard time finding a vein.  And since I had lymph nodes removed on the left side, I’m not allowed to get my blood pressure checked or give blood (or get chemo) on my left arm… and righty was feeling a little shy, so things just took longer than they really should. And I’ve got a couple of REALLY pretty bruises.

Things then ran late for my “learning about your chemo” session, and THEN was 30 min late for the actual chemo.

The chemo itself wasn’t SO bad.  I hung out in a hospital bed, complete with my kick-ass boots, and floral dress with coordinating red cardigan from Old Navy… because I’m cheap and it’s stretchy.  My BEST accessory was the “ice gloves” that I got to wear for the Taxotere infusion, since it will evidently help me avoid peripheral neuropathy, which is still my mom’s bugaboo from her colon cancer chemo that she finished almost 2 years ago.

Ice Gloves Baby

The only real complication I had while in the hospital was a little bit of an allergic reaction to the Taxotere infusion, so we had to stop down, give me an injection of Benadryl, which then made me feel kind of twitchy, like I needed to move around a lot, and then delayed the time of the chemo even more…

Since coming home, I’ve been OK.  I do have a couple of anti-nausea drugs, and some Zantac because I started to have a little bit of reflux at SCCA, and it’s been helping with the nausea since I got home. One of the anti-nausea things is also anti-anxiety, so it helped me sleep last night.

Probably the best night of sleep I’ve had in at least a couple of weeks- I even managed to get my arm under my head some… so I was sleeping in a position I’m used to.  Not more than 1-2 hours at a time, but I felt more refreshed than I have in a while.

Today, I’m tired, but not sleepy, if that makes any sense.  I had to take a LOT of pills this morning, which feels odd, but whatever. I’ve decided to figure out how to create my own Windows Phone/ Windows 8 app to track medications so that I don’t have to keep a paper log of everything I’m putting in my body all of the dang time right now.  If anyone wants to do the coding part for me let me know… I’ve got some specifications that would make it useful including color coding to let me know if I can take a pain pill again, and alarms for things I NEED to take at certain times.

So in general, I’ve got this.  One down, three to go.  And as of today, I see no reason I can’t get through this and get past it.

Breast Cancer Ninja style!