bluedasher

Deb, I find I'm pretty good during the day most days but I tend to crash about 8 PM. Even last week - the third week of my first cycle so the best time, I was fine for leading business meetings during the day and performing pretty normally but I had to turn my 8 PM meeting over to someone else - I just couldn't do it.

Day 3 and 4 after treatment it gets worse, I think because the steroids disturb my sleep a bit on the first two days. For me, a lot of it also seems related to the blood effects. When my white cells got really low, I was so tired I couldn't do hardly anything all day. From now on I'll get Neupogen so I hope that won't happen again. But my red cells are low and that reduces my energy - not nearly as bad but I think it contributes to me tiring in the evening.

Traci, I'm on Zophran (really the generic version of it) for nausea and that seems to be doing the trick for me. The only vomiting incidents I've had were when nausea came on suddenly during diahrea but one time I had gotten nauseous only just before so I had just taken the Zophran and it hadn't had time to act and the other I was just suddenly nauseous and it didn't give me a chance to take anything. I do have Compazine to take as needed if the Zophran doesn't solve the problem but I haven't needed that much. It was nice to have the time I tossed my cookies right after taking the Zophran pill because I wasn't sure how much of the Zophran had gotten into my system. I'm on Zophran twice a day but my chemo nurse said up to 4 times a day is okay if I need it.

Cupcake, yes I think I'll do better this time. I asked my onc if I could taper my steroid dose by doing half a dose today (day 3) and a quarter tomorrow instead of stopping cold turkey after day 2. She said that would be okay and I'm hoping to avoid the steroid crash. And she has me starting the Neupogen today so I should avoid the Neutropenia which was even worse. 

My head folliculitis or acne (from one site I read, if the follicules get clogged and form a white head its acne, if it is just the red spots it isn't but I can't see up there well enough to tell) seems to be clearing up. But there is always a new minor surpise. This time my steroid cheek flush is unbalanced. My left side has just a small pink spot and the right is much bigger. The rosy cheeks looked okay when they were balanced but now it is really odd looking. And I have a dry peeling patch on the right side that doesn't help either. I put some Eucerin on it which I hope will help. My hands get really dry if I don't keep up with the moisturizing cream too.

I'm scheduled for Look Good Feel Better next week. I'm generally not one for cosmetics but if I have to go somewhere with my blotchy red face I may need to break down and use something to conceal it. At first they were talking about maybe cancelling that session because they might not get volunteers Thanksgiving week but I'm glad they didn't because the next session that would work for me was well into December and had the holiday problem too.

I'm not looking forward to the probable transfusion next week but I'm also kind of worried that my red cells will get too low over the weekend and I'll be stuck with waiting for the weekend to pass before getting my blood topped up. My nurse said that they use to do the transfusion at the level that mine are at but now they wait until the hematocrit drops below 25 or the hemoglobin drops below 9.  I'm not sure whether to go in for the next blood count on Monday or whether to wait until mid-cycle on Wednesday. I guess base it on how I feel.

Bethany, I hope I put about the right amount in my FSA for next year. It is so hard to figure the amount I'll be using with rads coming up. Is the cream for rads prescription or OTC? Sometimes these things cost more OTC than my $10 prescription copay so I'm sorry to see some things be made OTC. But I guess I'm pretty lucky to have a low copay and shouldn't complain.

Rickster, I don't think it is necessary.  A lot of people leave theirs at the "peach fuzz" length. It either may grow from there or fall ot. My scalp is a bit irritable. It had a lot of little bumps before my son clipped it short with scissors - he didn't want to try to run the clippers over the bumps. The bumps are down now but I still have little red spots and don't want to possibly irritate it with shaving. I may get it clipped a little shorter. I think even that little bit of stubble helps keep my head from getting too chilled.

He did shave my sideburns because they weren't falling out at all and I thought I looked silly with just that hair peeking out from my scarves or hats.

Patricia, your welcome. 

Yes, I'm getting them. They were very bumpy at first. Now they have flattened out but there are still little red spots. My onc thinks it is acne - she suggested tetracycline but I didn't think it was bad enough to justify throwing another systemic medicine at my body. So she prescribed a topical lotion - clindamycin phosphate (generic for Cleocin-T). It seems to be helping. At least they aren't itching anymore. I also stopped using a lint roller to get the loose hair - I've had such bad reactions to dressing adhesive on my chest that I thought the adhesive from the lint roller might be irritating my scalp. Now that my hair is clipped short the shedding isn't that bad anyway.

She also suggest going with my head uncovered as much as possible. I'll have to cover sometimes due to cold air, but around the house when it is warm enough I'll go bare. And I don't mind going commando outside if my head gets hat. Some of my scarves are pretty light and cool so if I wear them I can keep my head covered. 

3 and a half weeks out from insertion and the catheter going to the neck has stopped bothering me. I'm not aware of it anymore unless I think about it. My port is visible but not as prominent as mason's. The port incision is still a little tender when pushed on but I think in another week or two that will be better. Chemo with one quick stick today was really nice.

Thanks, Carolyn. I really hope that my doctor says the treatment will be okay today. I don't want my schedule to slip because I have business trips planned to align to the thrid week when I feel good.

I'm not dehydrated now. I did get dehydrated when my white cells were so low. When I felt so tired and weak that I just wanted to lie down it was hard to get enough fluids in. And my serum sodium was low then too. They gave me 2 liters of saline and since the white cells came back a week and a half ago I've been able to drink lots. When the tech did the stick on Saturday she was able to use the inside the elbow vein which no one has found for a while so I take that as a good sign (though I also think she was very good). I'm so tired of them sticking the back of the hand which feels sore so long after.

We usually eat fairly low salt, but I've been adding salt to my food and eating bananas for potassium. I'm only feeling tired during exertion like the up-hill walk so I think that is probably RBC making oxegen delivery to the muscles a little poor.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to your husband. 

Kristi, did you get Neulastin or Neupogen. I didn't and was very tired and unable to do anything for about a week due to low neutrophils (a kind of white cell). After a blood test showed how low my white cells were, my onc gave me Neupogen and it brought the WBC counts back up after a few days so I felt much better.

If you are getting Neulastin or Neupogen, it can cause bone pain. You might ask your Dr if you can take Aleve. I've found it much better than Ibuprophen for my pains. It really helped my bursitis shoulder. And I was on 800 mg dowses of Ibuprophen for that.

Fammy,  I have tried the bands for seasickness and they didn't help me as far as I could tell. I only wore them for a day and a half because I found them too irritating to my wrists.

ebann,  I walked about 2 km today. It does help but today I was having a harder time. My red blood cell count and hemoglobin were below normal on my pre-chemo blood test yesterday. It was day 20 so I'm disappointed that they had gone down instead of up since day 11. The long up hill on my walk was much harder than usual. I hope it doesn't stop me from having chemo tomorrow. I've been careful to get enough iron so that isn't the problem.

I'm back to doing the resistance exercises for my bursitis shoulder and that is going well. Therapy has been delayed by surgery and chemo. I'm glad to be able to get back to doing something for it.

Tonight I made some ginger snaps. I'll keep some out and freeze some so that I have supplies for combating nausea. The home made ones are so much better.

I also modeled hats for my DIL and granddaughter to get advice on which to keep and which to send back. Since I got back from a trip yesterday, this is the first time that my DIL saw my almost bald head. I have a thin coating of peach fuzz but the scalp is very visible.  I was worried about how she would react - she is 18 months so it is difficult to explain to her. But it didn't bother her at all. She would look at a hat and say "cute." Pretty soon she was borrowing the hats to try on herself and switching hats on my head.

Carolyn, that's a lot to deal with. As far as the "accident" I think you should congratulate yourself on keeping your head and not getting into a car accident with that distraction going on in rush hour traffic.

As I mentioned earlier, last Sunday night I was at dinner at the hotel with my colleagues and went off to the bathroom. In the middle of having diahrrea, I suddenly lost my dinner and most of it went onto my clothes - something about the diahrrea seems to trigger ti sometimes even if I haven't been feeling nauseous. Fortunately, it was a single room bathroom and was near the elevator. So I cleaned up as best as I could (which wasn't much) ducked into the elevator, hurried to my room, changed and came back down to finish our conversation (but not eat any more).

It was kind of embarrasing to have to send the clothes off in the hotel laundry in that condition (even though I had cleaned them a bit) but I figured they needed to be washed soon to keep from being damaged and I didn't want to pack them dirty anyway. 

Having to fly yesterday and pushing fluids pre-chemo, I was worried that the seat belt sign would come on and trap me in my seat at the wrong time so I kept getting up to make sure to keep my bladder empty.

How terrible! My hospital has more than one operating room and my BS scheduled the surgery for Saturday. He likes to operate then when it is quiet.

Can you get them to give you an appointment that is first thing in the morning? I always like that as the fasting isn't as much of a strain and, and if you are first, you won't get delayed by an earilier surgery running long.

However, I had a similar experience for the proceedure to put my port in. I wanted to get it in before starting chemo and there was only an afternoon appointment available. I was scheduled for 1 PM and they didn't start on me until after 4 PM. I was worried they would cancel, but I was also worried about being operated on by people who had been working so long already. Procedures before me had gone long and the port insertion uses special equipment in radiology so I guess there was only one room.

If you are going to donate, you might donate to Pantene Beautiful Lengths which has a better record than Locks of Love for producing lots of wigs. My hair didn't qualify for donation - too much grey. It takes donation from multiple people to make a wig and they have to be able to dye the hair to match. Grey hair won't take the dye uniformly with non-grey hair. I cut mine from long to about 4" long before surgery to make it easier to manage after surgery and to have less come off during chemo.

I was going to buzz it when it started to fall out, but I had to go on a business trip for a week on Day 14 and it hadn't started to fall out yet. On day 16 it started to fall out and most was gone by day 18.  I wished I had a way to cut the rest off there because having about 90% gone with lots of scalp showing but random bits of 5" long hair left looked kind of demented. The rest of the hair isn't showing any signs of coming out.

My son clipped it short with scissors when I got home. My scalp is kind of irritated and has lots of little bumps on it so we were worried about using clippers or a razor to buzz it short or shave it. He did shave the sideburns. My sideburns looked funny coming out from my scarf and they weren't coming off at all.