Side Effects

Interesting, almost exactly 12 hours to the minute after receiving the infusion did I feel the side effects. Laying on the couch, I started to feel achy in my hand joints and knee. Soon after, the fever started. 100.4, 100.6, now it's 102. Can't sleep. Most likely caused by the fever, made worse by the damn "Drip Drip Drip" that was happening. The ceiling was leaking because of the rain.

I lean over. "Thom? Thom?"
"Huh? What?!"
I was silent for a few seconds and then he heard it. "Drip Drip Drip"
"!@#$%&"
He gets up and puts a trash bucket under the drip.
He climbs back into bed.
"DRIP DRIP DRIP"
"!@#$%^& @#^T^@&"
He throws back the covers and walks to his dresser. I hear some shuffling and then he places a pair of socks at the bottom of the bucket.
Aaahh "drip dri dr" He's so resourceful.

Now I'm awake. Even my eyeballs hurt!

Funny how this triggered some memories of having fevers when I was a kid. The drug of choice was St. Joseph's children aspirin. Still sold today, I might add! (Ding! Shameless plug for St. Joe's aspirin! Where's my check?! LOL)

When I had fevers, my mom would dissolve 2 tablets in a tablespoon of water and waited until they started to dissolve. I still remember the texture and even the taste. It was comforting.

Other tricks she had in her arsenal (from bad to worse): stripping me naked so my teeth would chatter so hard I swear they were going to break in my head. Wet towels on my naked body (No comments about the naked part - I was just a kid - you PERVS! LOL), teeth chattering so hard now it shook my very brain. And the WORST: an ice bath. OH MY GOD! That should be listed as one of the top 50 worst tortue devices ever devised. Next to Chinese water torture DRIP DRIP DRIP!!! I say devised because it's evil! So evil, it's EEE-VEEL! Whole body went into convulsive spasms. Brrrrr. And my poor mom had to endure the screams, the crying and the pleading. The poor thing. Mothers are the strongest people I know.

I'm laughing out loud as I'm typing this. Memories, in the corner of my mind...
Memories are funny things.

Anyways, the achiness and fever are expected side effects, so this is just par for the course. This medicine will make me better, faster, stronger. They have the technology...

Heehee, another memory: The Six Million Dollar Man. Great show! Cheesy effects, but brilliant none-the-less. And six million dollars was a lot of money back then. Come to think of it, it's still a lot of money now!

Finally...A bit of good news!

I got a phone call from Dr. Silver from Dana-Farber. He finally got a chance to compare my films and I got some good news. He said that the nodules in my lungs have remained unchanged, they didn't get any bigger, nor were there more of them! That's great news because it means that the medicine is keeping things under control! He was very happy with those results, as am I. I finally have some definitive news about how I'm doing. If we can keep the status quo, that's more than fine with me!

We're going to continue with the treatment as we have been, no need to change anything. Let me tell you, I slept like a rock last night.

Keep the thoughts and prayers coming!

Zometa

Met with the doctor here in Worcester about the Zometa (Zo-may-tah). I have my first intravenous infusion appointment this Friday, the 19th, at 9am. The infusion lasts about 30 minutes. Side effects include fever and/or bone pain, or generalized achiness.

This drug is manufactured by Novartis and I got a patient starter kit. Included in this kit was lots of reading material, a water bottle, hand sanitizer with a clip I can put on my purse, and a cool bone-shaped pen! I like funky pens, so I was walking around the lab here today wearing my bone pen, telling corny jokes like, "I got a bone to pick with you" or "No bones about it, you're swell!" People just shake their heads at me. I crack myself up though. :)

I'm feeling fine, except for the kidney stone pain.

Sarah reached her goal!!! Thanks to all of you for donating!!

Kidney Stones

I was in the emergency room on Wednesday for back pain which turned out to be kidney stones. They are non-obstructive and not big enough to zap, so they just sent me home with pain meds. Thanks. I made the mistake of going to the hospital across the street from me at work. It's a trauma/life flight center, so Thom and I were in the ER for about 7 hours. There were 2 traumas while I was there. They were so full, I got a lovely spot in the hallway, right next to the nurses' station.

Needless to say, my back is killing me. Been drinking so much water and pissing like a racehorse. Interesting cliche. I've always wondered where this saying came from, so I googled it. Horses, it turns out, don't always feel comfortable urinating just anywhere. Show horses and racehorses spend a great deal of time in their pens and come to feel safe and secure there. They don't like to urinate outside of those pens and in many cases won't.

In fact, show and racehorses are frequently returned to their pens to allow them to urinate. Hence racehorses are often walking around outside of their pens with an urgent need to urinate. (Source: www.joe-ks.com/phrases/phrasesP.htm)

Sounds like me. I hate public restrooms and will not "go" unless it's an emergency! More than you need to know about me, but hey, we're all friends here! ;)

Talked to the doctor at Dana-Farber. He's out of the office until Wednesday and he told me that he will doing a side-by-side comparison of my films then. Hey! It's only been a month! What's the rush?! Pissing me off! <---Hmm, seems that we're back on that subject again! Do I hear water running??? LOL

I told my new boss about the cancer today. I've been putting it off because he just started like 3 weeks ago and that's all he needs! He was very understanding and compassionate and told me that if I need anything, to let him know. That's a relief. The last thing I need is problems with my boss over this. He told me that I should NEVER stop fighting and always keep a positive attitude. Boy am I trying.

Oh, before I forget, big thanks to Ann Falco for donating to my friend Sarah's cause! She's SO close to her goal!! I will write about her hike in another post. She did so well, I'm so proud of her!! Way to go Sarah!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I'm sure you all know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I don't know about you, but almost everywhere I go, I see pink. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this is GOOD! It makes people aware, makes them think, and it gives people different ways to help. But on the other hand, it makes me aware and makes me think. There's not a minute of my day where I am not thinking about this disease and that I have it. I don't want to go to the grocery store and have it shoved in my face. This is going to be a tough month for me from now on.

I do appreciate it though. More strides have been made in breast cancer research in the last 20 years than has occurred overall in the past 200 years! That's amazing to me.

I will be wearing my pink ribbon pin all month. And I may just buy a pink can of corn!

Infusion Appointment

Finally got my first appointment to get my bone-strengthening infusion: October 17th at 2:15pm at the Worcester Medical Center. Yeah!! Now I don't have to go into Boston once a month!

Two posts in one day, wow!

What are people dressing up as for Halloween? I'm going as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. She's basically a rag doll. We all dress up here at work and there's contests, it's fun.

That's it for now.

What?!

Spent most of my morning calling people. I called Dr. Silver's nurse (Dana-Farber) and she told me that somehow, some of my chest CT is missing and they don't have enough to compare. Just by looking at my most current CT, there are a couple of nodules in my chest that are slightly bigger than they would like. BUT, they don't have the previous films, so they can't say if they got bigger, or stayed the same size, or even got smaller.

Then I called UMass to try to get another copy of my original CT sent to Dana-Farber AGAIN! UMass couldn't even find me in the system! I said What?! How can that be??? After some investigating, it was discovered that I was listed as "WebberLebrun". Oh my God! Where did Webber come from?!?! Anyways, I had to fax them a release form and now a CD with my CT results are on their way to Dana-Farber. Then I may get a result. This has been going on for 3 weeks now.

The nurse is going to set up my Zometa infusion, finally. I told her that I was very disappointed in Dana-Farber because they are supposed to be one of the best hospitals around and that I have had to wait this long for anything to happen. I said it's unacceptable. She apologized profusely and told me how bad she felt. I know I feel better after getting that off my chest.

I don't know if you remember about a month or so ago, I was complaining about shoulder pain that lasted for quite a while. Well, I learned this morning from the nurse that I have a rib fracture. OK, WHAT?! How in the name of all that's good did I get a rib fracture?? She said that it was high up on my ribs and it looks post-traumatic. I guess that means that it's not a brand new fracture, but it happened within the last 6 months or so. And here I was thinking I was sleeping on my arm wrong or something. I can't recall anything I've done that could've resulted in a rib fracture. That's just weird. Maybe I should come up with some totally crazy story! I know! I was throwing the old football around with Mike Vrabel from the Patriots and I tackled him and broke my rib. Yeah, that's a much better sounding story than "I don't have a clue as to how I fractured my rib."

Thank you to my friends Jenn, Michele and Adrian for donating to Sarah's fundraising! She and I both appreciate it very much! You guys are so awesome!