I had my first round of chemo on Friday which involves being infused with a bunch of stuff over several hours. There are a bunch of drugs they give you so you can tolerate the chemo. The actual chemo drugs for the first four rounds are Adriamycin and Cytoxan which my oncologist describes as the "boot camp of chemo". The Adriamycin is the more intimidating of the two. Rather than let it drip like all of the other stuff, they bring it in a giant syringe and sit with you while they push it to make sure you don't have a heart attack. It's red, and it makes your urine/sweat/tears red. The nurse didn't find a MUGA (?) heart scan in my records so she was reluctant to give it to me. We had to wait until she got hold of my doctor and received his confidence that my heart could handle it. The anti-nausea drugs they give you post chemo work well so I only felt a general queasiness and was able to keep eating each day (though I have no appetite). The biggest side effect so far is that everything, including breathing, is simply exhausting.
I went back to work yesterday. It was not easy. I tried to go today. I got up and laid around the shower floor long enough to wash myself. I tried for 2 hours total to get ready between several rest breaks until I gave up. I slept until 5pm. I had a bunch of weird nightmares. I'm feeling quite a bit better at the moment (able to sit upright in bed and type) so I expect tomorrow to go better. Kevin is at rehearsal for the Faure Requiem. His school is doing it with orchestra and combined choruses the evening after round two of chemo. It's been in the plan since before the cancer. He said, it's too bad, because I've done it before and had mentioned I wanted to sing it. It seems funny the things people think about who are able to do the things that people do. It's funny how quickly you become someone who doesn't know what you'll be able to do tomorrow.
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