I’m coming to you live from the infusion room at Texas Oncology. Today is treatment day.  My third round of AC (Adriamycin and Cytoxan).  I normally come on Thursdays, but since the bad days don’t seem to hit me until about 4-5 days in, I figure moving my treatment date up will put the bad days closer to the weekend.  That way I’m not missing work if I don’t have to.

Bloodwork has come back and I appear to be doing fabulous on all counts, and with little to no side effects to boot.  Sure, I’m definitely having my bad days with nausea, fatigue and just feeling totally crappy, but all and all I’m rockin’ this chemo train–ain’t no thang!

I usually put this lidocaine cream on my port site before coming to treatment but it doesn’t help much because they always have to dig into my chest to find the port, which is attached to the muscle and can be super sore once they’re done.  I mentioned to the nurse this morning that the saline flush feels a bit like a rush of morphine running through my vein.  It’s a nice feeling.

Nurse Suzie is now injecting me with the “red devil” (Adriamycin).  See pics below.  My hands are shaking a bit but I think it’s the coffee, which I haven’t drank in days, maybe even weeks.

Side note:  Nurse Suzie rocks!  They all do here at TxOnc!  Good place to come if you ever join the “big C collective.”  Also, every now and then they have massage therapists come and give you feet or hand massages during treatment, which is a nice touch and free to patients through donations.  Somehow it was timed perfectly that I got a foot massage while getting my first dose of Adriamycin.  That was sweet!

Did a serious workout in the cancer survivors’ class at the Y last night.  Focused on the Kinesis machines and did a short workout afterward with the Bosu ball.  That takes some practice for sure!  I really like the Kinesis machine.  You can get great workout on both.

It’s great to be able to do these workouts with other women survivors.  There’s a lot of camaraderie, good advice and support to go around.  Although I seem to be the only one doing the class through chemo.  The others finished their treatments and have commented on how brave I am to do the 3-month fitness program while actually going through chemo.  Guess we will see how tough I truly am when it gets closer to the finish line, because this is certainly a marathon and not a sprint!

One of the women in my class who had the same type breast cancer as me and a similar situation, but no mutation, stated to me that one of the chemo drugs I’m on, Cytoxan, is derived from mustard gas (I just looked it up and it’s true).  Freakin’ lovely!