First Round of Taxol

Didn't mention too much about how nervous we were about my first round of Taxol. There are people who have extreme allergic reactions to this medication, so there are a lot of precautions that are taken when administering the med. They give you tons of preventative meds to reduce any allergic reactions and they drip the med super slow to assess for any reactions. Most of yall know that I have a shellfish allergy and the feeling of not being able to breathe because your tongue and airway are swelling is a scary one. Was not looking forward to taking a med that they anticipate people having this reaction. I heard a lady behind me in the infusion room having a reaction like this in her chest and airway. They are so used to handling things like this there, it was like no big deal at all! Just dripped some extra benadryl and kept moving on...with these drugs, the risks of not breathing at 100% are sometimes not as bad as not taking the med at all! Crazy.

Thank goodness I am in the clear in this department. All went well today with my infusion (but honestly, I wouldn't have known if I was good or not because one of the preventative meds they gave me was benadryl by IV, so I was KNOCKED OUT!!) haha. Mom came with me today for treatment (I opened my eyes a couple of times when they started the Taxol and I think she was trying to pretend that she wasn't staring at me checking my breathing the same way you do with a baby when you bring one home). Haha. Some things about being a mom just don't change no matter how old your baby gets :)

My oncologist was out of town, so I saw a different physician today. My blood counts have been slowly dropping for the past month or so and today my red counts were extremely low. Makes sense that I've been so fatigued...the anemia is wearing on me! Unfortunately, there's not enough liver or greens in the world that would make much of a difference for me (believe me, I've been pushing all of the iron-rich foods I can find!), it's a side effect of the drug that I don't have much control over. My counts are low enough that I am a candidate for screening for a shot that will boost my red cell productions in a similar way that the Neulasta shot I took with the A/C chemo boosted my white count productions, but of course, this is not just a question of need, there's a financial process that has to be completed. Blech. The dr. hopes that Taxol won't be as hard on my system as A/C drugs and they will come up a bit after a week. If not, will have some more tests run next week to apply me for the red blood cell boosting shot.

I'm kind of scared to find out how much this baby costs because she noted that it's significantly more than the Neulasta shot I took the last 4 rounds which had a price tag of around $11k each!! Yes! For 1 shot!! and I had 4 of them!! J and I are feeling so very lucky for our situation. We have awesome insurance and tons of grants we qualified for which have covered most of our expenses and if we had to, we could pay it. It would suck, but we could pull it off. God is good. Financial stress is one burden that has been lifted from our family.

So, with me being so exhausted from the benadryl and anemia, we have the little perfect visitor and toddler entertainer for a couple of days at the house...Aunt Boog!!

I can hear her right now in the backyard with Austin chasing him around while he screams like a crazy little monkey. They are so cute together. I was listening to her tell Austin to 'dry it up because I know you're faking it, I was a little kid once.' Haha. I love her so much.


So, I'm not feeling full of much of anything this evening. Just WORN OUT!! But I know that today was a big WIN for us because being able to continue on with the original plan of treatment of 12 rounds of Taxol is the best proven ticket to being cancer free in the future. This is kind of how I'm feeling tonight...

Love
Jenn