9/9/09 Chemo day one

“Hey cowgirl, are you ready to round this thing up?”  B’s warm body enshrouded mine as I was blinking the sleep out of my eyes.  The kat-man-budda (our large siamese boy) crawled in with me for an early morning touch.   I got out of bed and put on my boots.  I’m quite a sight with my new pink tie dyed t-shirt , bare legs and boots.

I got a vision of chemo while in NY last weekend.  One of the drugs is a rusty red, and I saw it going in the port-o-love and directly to my left breast.  It traveled like a fireball and turned into a pale yellow, cooled by the ocean of blue that is my spirit.

I’d say this trail is full of surprises.  Some of them are so sweet.  Some are hot, decaying and frightening.  I saw a mangy fox in our garden this morning.  She was just sitting there by the pepper plants.  She looked really bad, weary of the road.  She was quiet as she got up and walked slowly into the woods.  Her trail to me seems so much harder than mine.  Not many would give her anything but a bullet to put her out of her misery.

My chemo cycle is 14 days long.  The infusion is day 1.  I return again in two weeks, on day one for another infusion.  The experience was relatively uneventful, the port-o-love works well, easy access and dismount.  All staff were very accommodating.  It’s quite a peaceful place.  The kids decided to go to round 2 with me instead of one.  We’re cool with that.

At this point my visualizer is really active.  I drew the whole time I was hooked up except for when I was eating.  Yea, I was hungry and ate all of the fresh fruit and cottage cheese and green salad they gave me.  When you’re a soup snob, hospital minestrone just doesn’t get a rise but being the trooper he is, B helped me finish the soup.  This first pic was just a close up of one I’d done earlier of the lasso gathering the disorganized cells.  I just had to get it on paper again.

I was particularly aware when the Adriamycin was put in.  Saline dripped from the bag, Cytoxin was to go in after the A, which was put in through a separate attachment.  The port is cool, they can draw blood from it or put meds in.  When it was time for the A to go in, the nurse used a separate insertion tube because does not come in a bag like the other stuff.  It was in two large syringes, very red liquid.  My automatic response was something like ‘there it is’ the stuff some refer to as battery acid.  (I’m not going there.) So B and I were driving home wondering who was the one who said “hey let’s put this stuff in a human and see what happens…”  (Kinda like who decided to eat the first lobster?) I am amazed that our veins can withstand something that can apparently burn your skin if it leaks out of the port.

I was reading love mail, and had to tear myself away so we could leave.  And so I’m home now.  Feeling ok, like my brain knows something is in my system, but my body is trying it on for size, not sure what to do.  My guts know something is in there, so I’m practicing the gut massage the accupuncturist taught me, and look forward to seeing him tomorrow.  Then back to the center for a shot to stimulate white blood cell production.

It’s good to be home.