Today I had my last chemo treatment!! It is a little hard to believe it's the last one, but it also has been a long few months. With chemo being every 3 weeks, I did get a good week right before I went back in. That's been nice!
So what have those weeks been like? I'm very nauseous for about a week and mildly nauseous for almost all 3 weeks. My sense of taste comes and goes. At it's worst, anything I ate tasted like paper for about 2 days, at it's best I can actually drink a beer and it tastes good 😊 Food tends to come out of my body the first week in rather unpleasant ways, I'll spare you the details. In the beginning I got lots of bloody noses, some lasting for 10 minutes. I think the humidity of Wisconsin, California, and even Colorado have helped those immensely! I have a hard time sleeping at night although I've gotten good at napping and as you know, I lost my hair.
All in all, I also know that I my side effects could have been much worse. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but it could have been worse. I didn't get any neuropathy, mouth sores, and my eyelashes are still hanging on. My eyebrows are mostly gone, but hopefully the eyelashes survive.
It's been an interesting mental game and I just keep telling myself I can get thru the next few days and then this part will be over. I've met a number of survivors recently and they all say this is the worst part...YAY!
So what's next? I'll have an MRI in a couple weeks to see if the tumors are gone and if the lymph nodes have shrunk. I'll meet with the surgeon and we'll get surgery scheduled. I'm guessing it will be sometime in September. Once I am healed from the surgery, I'll start radiation I have not met my radiologist, so I'm not exactly sure but sounds like maybe everyday for a month. At some point after radiology, I'll have reconstructive surgery. During all of this I will continue to get Herceptin every 3 weeks. I can't remember how many of those treatments I need, but Herceptin is an antibody and only takes half an hour to get the infusion. There are no side effects (hopefully) so it should be a breeze.
The road is still long and I am starting to get anxious because I have very little information about the next steps but I'm just going to continue this journey one day at a time.
Did I mention that today was my last chemo 😊
