All Pinked Out

Chemo Round #7, better known to us as Christmas Chemo, took place on December 17th at the usual crime scene. This new regime of drugs, which will occur for four sessions three weeks apart, takes six to seven hours to administer. That is 7 hours tied to an IV pole with nowhere to go other than the restroom. Talk about seriously starting to fidget. Senor Poodela, although confined to a small chair for what is practically a work day, did have the opportunity to walk to a grocery store and pickup our lunch.
Ah,the drug Taxol. This is my new favourite healing potion. Some of the side effects of this drug are:
Sore throat, nose bleeds, coughing, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, mouth sores, muscle and joint pain, flushing, dizziness, drowsiness and of course hair loss ! I have had them all. I had a severe bout of the abdominal/labour pain mixed with my new tendency to fall over to the right in the Bay the other week. I looked like Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame and no one seemed to notice. That is what “they” say about older ladies. No one sees them after a certain age. Even with a situation like that. Oh, how I wish I had the visual record of the event. Where are people with their I Phones when you need them? On the other hand, the Bay might have me on security. I was wearing a nice hat though. I picked up my new chapeau (we are a bi lingual country after all) at a crafts fair after almost destroying several display tables with my lurching. The nurses and doctors have had words floating around like CBC and they are not talking about Jian Goshemi and the powers that run our national broadcasting institution.They mean complete blood count. The thought on the lurching was that I had a low blood count as a result of the chemo damage to the bone marrow. Words like blood transfusion had us pretty excited. What if I had to have one and received the blood of a pit bull and not that of a pure bred poodle ? As a result of the lurching thing, and after blood tests for anemia,an abdominal ultrasound, isotope heart scan, an EKG, the oncologist has decided that it would be best for me to round out my year with a brain scan. This is going to happen at noon on New Years Eve. This is how we seniors with cancer rock it out in Victoria. I have no idea how long the test will take. I guess the first thing they have to do is look and see if I still have a brain. You laugh but I had to have my sister-in-law show me where the zipper was on my suitcase when I was at her house a couple of weeks ago. And this is not a new suitcase! I cannot single task let alone multi. But Senor Poodela and I did manage to pull together a complete traditional Christmas dinner on Dec. 25th. Talk about team work.
On the hair front… Little tiny pieces of hair try to grow back between chemo treatments. For a brief fun-filled moment Senor Poodela and I discussed dying my hair green for the holidays. Sort of like a chia pet…