Getting ready for round FIVE...

So here I am, pumped full of decadron (they are making me take five of them tonight, and five more tomorrow morning). Actually, I was quite tired earlier, as it has been another unbearably humid and fairly hot day and I've been running errands and running myself down on what I anticipate to be my last 'good' day. But now, I feel wide awake, flushed, with my heart beating faster. Welcome to the wonderful, awful world of decadron. Boy this will be fun... Better remember to take some Ativan tonight!

I am very curious to see how my first course of Taxol will go tomorrow. Somehow, it feels all new and more scary again to go to chemo as I have no idea how my body will react to this new poison and how it will feel. In other words, I am a bit apprehensive because I do not yet know what my 'new normal' is for this type of chemo. My poison man and all the nurses tell me that the Taxol should be much easier to take than the AC part I've just finished. I am hoping that they are right.

In contrast to the AC part of the chemo, the T part will take much longer to be pushed into my body: at least three hours! For the first time, they go even more slowly than that, as it is not unlikely that I will have some sort of allergic reaction (hence all that decadron). So the Netflix gift subscription will really come in handy then, as this is quite a time period to keep myself entertained. Apparently the nurse will also drop in every fifteen minutes or so to check on me. Thus the whole thing tomorrow promises to be an 'interesting' experience.

To prepare for the remained of the week, DH just finished cooking up a big panful of our summer sausage stew. The neighbors were kind enough to give us a big bag of zucchini, eggplant, and cukes. The former two, some Italian peppers from our own garden, plus some frozen tomatoes from last year, spiced with a smattering of fresh herbs in the garden and a splash of balsamico make a nice stew in which to cook browned Italian sausages. We serve this kind of thing over whole wheat pasta, but it would also work over rice. All this summer goodness, but the smell of the browning sausages was more than I could take. So I hid out upstairs behind closed curtains. It's so sad -- I used to love cooking that, and now I cannot even bear the smell of it. Hopefully I'll be able to eat it, though!

On a different note: I went to the butcher for a checkup yesterday. Although he's not normally all that personable and chatty, yesterday he must have been in quite a splendid mood. Not only did he already come in beaming, but he actually asked how I am doing! I was floored. He gave me an exam, including my right, unaffected breast, and the right arm with the DVT. Given that my arm wasn't horribly swollen, he declared my DVT "not bad at all" and agreed to take out the catheter as soon as I'm done with the chemo. Yay, at least that. I'm looking forward to it -- both to being done and to getting rid of the chemo port/catheter. Hopefully I can combined it with the tissue expander exchange, though. 

Anyway, after the two minute exam, Dr. R beamed at me, declaring several times that I am doing very well, and dismissing me until my next exam in four months. Yipee. At least one doctor off my docket for the time being!

Thus the most important thing for right now is to get through the rest of the chemo. I desperately need to work on the memory thing. My friends 2l and Starman loaned me their Nintendo with a brain training thingy on it. Apparently I've got to play with that more, as I realized today that I had forgotten to pay the pile of bills on my desk. Two of those were my and DH's credit card bills, which means that they'll slap us with late fees for being one week overdue. Normally we pay absolutely everything on time, but this time with the chemo side effects and that unplanned ER visit/hospital stay, I totally got thrown off track and thought I had more time to pay the stuff than I actually did. Ooooops. DH called his credit card company, and they waived the fee right away. Mine was more suspicious and said to call back once the money has arrived, although they promised to waive the fee then. At least that. Now I just have to remember to call them back in a few days!