Chemo 2: Part 1---Done

Today was a tough day and not just because the streets were dangerous from the ice. We had understood the CT Scan had shown the cancer in two spots. One being the middle of her chest in the wall and not lung related. The other being a pocket of stomach lymph nodes that were massively swollen and cutting off  return blood flow from her foot causing the massive swelling in her leg.

That is just partially the situation.

In fact, she has multiple sites throughout her stomach area and down into her legs that are cancerous. The most obvious one we knew about, but the cancer is pretty much everywhere else in the region. the obvious implication--though no one will go that far--is it is everywhere in her body.

As usual, Sandi took the news far better than I did. Her quiet comment when we got settled in the infusion room was, "I'm not surprised."

She has said since early last October that she thought it was back. Even after we were told otherwise  when she was in the hospital and they had determined it was back, she has been sure it was everywhere in her.  Why we just found this out today I don't know. I don't think we both had misunderstood what we had been told before.

While her leg had been slowly going down that reversed over the weekend and by yesterday the swelling was markedly pronounced again and obvious to one and all. This indicates that the stomach lymph nodes have again attained a size to start cutting off blood flow. The hope is that the chemo that started today will again knock them back down a bit.

Her blood work looked fairly decent today though the white blood cell count continues to decline at a slower rate. Her anemia is a little better so no transfusion. No drug changes at this point which helps.

The chemo today was on a drug she has extensive history with and handles well so they could do the infusion a little quicker than originally planned. It is back to the new stuff tomorrow so the pace will be very slow and it will take most of the day. While it would be far better to do part two tomorrow,  we could,  if the predicted winter weather event of tonight and tomorrow morning makes it necessary, push the second part back to Thursday.

The plan going forward is to do that tomorrow, doctor visit with blood work and a shot on Friday and again next Tuesday. Another CT Scan to make absolutely sure the chemo is working is going to be done before the next round of chemo in two weeks. That date will be determined later depending on how she handles this round.

In the meantime, we rest and try to recover from today.