Day 105, Year 7: The First Chemo Treatment
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Weather: Gorgeous Day Early, Turning Cloudy, Now Pouring Rain
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
We survived the first day of chemo treatment. Yeah!!! Mark has had no side effects as yet, and life is continuing as usual. We went together to the treatment center that is about a mile and a half from the marina. When the weather is warmer, we can actually walk there. But today we drove and arrived with a backpack of snacks to eat during the three hour session. I left two hours into the treatment to go back to the boat to check on something and to then go and pick up Sam and Jonah from school. I thought, but was not 100 per cent sure, that I had turned off the soup I was cooking when we left in the morning, and when I returned to Windbird, I found that I had, in fact, turned it off. Then I got back into the car and headed to Woods Hole. By the time I picked up the boys and got back to the treatment center, Mark was sitting in the waiting room ready to go. He had a big bag with him that contained the “box” of drugs that was to be infused over the next two days, but it wasn’t hooked up to him. A visiting nurse was scheduled to come to Windbird in the afternoon to do this. So we went back to Windbird and the boys and I did a little play fishing on the dock before heading inside. It was so sunny and beautiful that we spent a little more time pretend fishing from the deck and then we went below to read and take naps. In the meantime, Mark waited for the visiting nurse. She didn’t come at 2 o’clock as expected and it wasn’t until 4:15 pm, precisely the time the boys get up from nap, that she did arrive. It was still warm enough in the cockpit “sunroom” for me to take the boys up to play while the nurse hooked Mark up to the box of meds and filled out eons of forms for insurance purposes. If you have ever been to visit anyone in the hospital that is hooked up to an IV, you have probably seen the little electronic box that regulates the flow of fluids. Well, Mark now has that electronic box in a fanny pack that he carries with him. The meds are in the fanny-pack as well and are hooked to mark through a small tube that runs from the box to the port-o-cath he had inserted in his chest this past week. In two days the nurse will return and take all of this away. All that will be left will be the bump on Mark’s chest where the port-o-cath resides. When he goes in for the next chemo treatment in two weeks, they will reinsert a needle into the port-o-cath and hook him up again.
Mark is doing incredibly well. That is partly due to his determination and partly due to the way chemo is done these days. Along with the drugs that they inject to kill off any possible lurking cancer cells, they also inject an anti-nausea medication and a steroid that boosts the ability of the anti-nausea med and at the same time gives you an energy boost for a couple days following. This helps you “over the hump” of the third day slump. At least that is the theory. So we will have to wait until the end of the week to see how Mark is feeling then, but right now he is doing great.
Heather and Jed came over this evening to pick Sam and Jonah up. We had invited them to stay for dinner if everything was going along fine. It was, so they stayed. Jed hasn’t been here since we arrived in November, so he took both boys and went for an explore around the marina. We had a delightful evening together on the boat and we’re hoping we can make this a weekly affair. And we are just elated that life could continue as usual on this first day of chemo. Let’s only hope that we can say the same on the last day.
