🎼🎶Christmastime is here! Happiness and cheer! Bringing lots of traffic jams from Interstate to here… 🎼🎶 Chemo’s in the air. Beeping everywhere. Nurses by their patient’s side. And many memories there.🎹🎵
Ahhh. The music of Christmas. 😁 After wrapping several Christmas presents for the Grandkids at home, Tim chauffeured me to MD Anderson in The Woodlands where I would get my blood drawn before chemo. I sat a while waiting for the lab to call before they realized I was not on the schedule. (Good thing I checked!😳😳) A new receptionist had checked me in for chemo, but didn’t realize my labs were missing. Things always seem to go wrong when Tim comes with me 🤪🙄.
After that — lunch. We often do this between labs and chemo, but it doesn’t usually take this long. The traffic was backed up all the way to the restaurants. I’m guessing it must be early-release day from school! Crazy…!
Panera Bread was packed, not a parking space in sight, so we ate at the Thai Cottage next door. I must say it was absolutely delightful! The pace was perfect. The chicken noodle soup was amazing, and I gobbled up the yellow curry with shrimp. YUM! And I had the satisfaction of beating Tim 2 out of 3 games of Yazy while we waited for our meal to arrive.
Coming back to the medical center the traffic was not quite as horrific. I arrived at my appointment early in hopes of an earlier chemo time. Well…no such luck. My appointment was at 2:15, which was exactly when they called me back. The drip didn’t actually get started until after 3:15. I ducked into the cafe to get an afternoon snack to take with me. I was glad to see they are finally stocked with some goodies that aren’t plant-based. I prefer the orange ones, but I’m not complaining.
Now, here I sit, getting my first bag of chemo (Perjeta), sporting my new t-shirt in honor of the Christmas spirit.
Last bag is now dripping. I am getting my last infusion of the year. It is treatment round number 73. That’s about how old I feel at times 😂😂. I’ve seen procedures changed multiple times in the nine years I have been coming here. All for the better, I’m sure. For example, Herceptin now has to be covered by a dark brown bag shown here, as they discovered it is light-sensitive. They can only bring one drug at a time. They used to be able to do all of them at once.
These little blue covers are new. They clamp over the chemo connector. Apparently there was some leakage (yikes!), so this makes the connector more secure. My nurse told me I should see them from now on.
I’m almost finished with the drip at this moments as I finish up this blog post. Tomorrow I will have the last scans of the year. Since they typically access my port for that, I asked my nurse to use the bigger gauge needle for chemo today. As soon as my machine beeps and she unhooks me, I’ll get to go. I will keep the line in until tomorrow, so I won’t have to get poked again and save time on the scans.
À la prochaine. Until next time…