Plan: Chemotherapy

I have a whiteboard in my room and that's what my nurse wrote on it today.
Plan: Chemotherapy

I had a pretty restful night without a roommate. Not that my roommate was noisy or anything, just, between the two of us, we'd been having a lot of people stopping by the room all night. Last night though, I don't think anyone checked on me all night. They brought me a new roommate this morning around 5 I think. She's been ok so far, mostly sleeping. She's 80. My old roommate was only about 50.
My night nurse came in around 6 to access my port. She said she'd never seen one placed where mine is (it's really close to my left armpit) and she wasn't completely comfortable accessing it, so she went off to find a pro. The two nurses were both stumped by my port location and ended up having to take off the steri-strips because the part that gets accessed is just under the incision. It took two tries and required a longer needle than normal, but it wasn't too bad. Again, not the best way to be woken up, but it was definitely easier than getting a regular IV started. I really need to track down some EMLA cream and see if that makes it even less painful to access. I'm sure, though, that once all the bruising goes away, it should be ok.

I have a really nice nurse today. She was joking with me when she was in here changing my bed sheets a little bit ago and said she was sure the last thing I wanted was a smart alec nurse, but I told her it was actually perfect for today. The more light-hearted we can keep things today, the better. She seems like she'll be fun to have around.

We're waiting for the pharmacy to bring up the first of the pre-meds I get today, Rasburicase. The rasburicase will help my kidneys deal with the broken down cancer cells to make sure I don't have any problems with tumor lysis syndrome. Apparently I have to have that 4 hours before the other meds, so we're hoping to get it started soon.
I'll have two other meds to get right before they start the actual chemo: Zofran and Decadron. Zofran is an anti-nausea drug and Decadron is the fancy name for dexamethosone, which all my Tufts friends will probably recognize as a synthetic glucocorticoid that we gave to our birds in the Romero lab. For everyone else, it's just a steroid that will also help with any nausea I might have.
Once I get all the pre-meds, it'll be time for the actual chemo. I'll probably be back with updates throughout the day. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers today!