Rocky Mountain High
This is a picture of me at the Kaiser Franklin building with its gorgeous 360 degree views of the Denver metro area framed to the west by the Rocky Mountains Range. I call it gettin' on my new Rocky Mountain High. It's an infusion center where I received my second chemo yesterday morning.
My first chemo was given to me in the hospital and was a surreal experience. I had been through so much at that point, but because the fluid kept filling my belly resulting in having to get it drained twice, the docs decided it was best to start chemo sooner than later. That meant my body had yet to recover from the grueling 6.5 hour surgery before I stared chemo. A double whammy on my poor body. During the first chemo, I was given pre-meds that knocked me out and at one point I had an out of body experience. It was as though I could see myself laying on the bed with the nurse, Scott and my mom sitting watching me and the IV bags draining into my body. It was a very somber moment and I felt like this marked my passage into the next, scary phase of chemo. This occurred on day 12 and I honestly questioned whether I would ever leave the hospital alive. On day 13 I had a port surgically implanted into my chest below my sternum. This will allow direct access each time blood is drawn and chemo is infused. This means I will not have to suffer getting an IV and a blood draw for my weekly chemo. I have been in denial about the port, for one thing it is a direct line into into my artery and heart. My heart! I just. Can't. Deal.
Chemo. I haven't ever been comfortable with that word. It's a word I never wanted to associate with any of my loved ones, including my dogs or myself, it's a word I did not comfortably use in my vocabulary.
At 4:00 am on the morning of my second chemo I had the worst anxiety, full on crybaby attack and it didn't stop until the nurse gave me something to calm me down. I was terrified of that damn port, had kept myself in denial about it and now it was time to deal with reality. Of course my imagination is always worse than reality and the port was painless. I won't have to endure getting an IV every week in my already weak veins. I ran into a co-worker who sadly has been getting chemo but looks great. He wished he'd gotten a port because after so many sessions IV's were tough on his veins.
I was grateful to have Scott and my childhood friend Cindi Swarts with me talking me down, trying to get me through my second session. Scott is an ICU nurse at the VA and Cindi was for many years an oncology nurse in Alaska and is now a Nurse Practitioner in Montrose. She and her husband David moved from Alaska to a beautiful farm (with 6 horses, a donkey, cutest dog ever - Dally, 3 house cats and a feral cat colony she rescues to spay & neuter) near Delta, but closer to Pea Green, Colorado. Yes, it exists! Anyway I couldn't be in better hands with these two. Plus they push me to keep drinking water, eat small bites every hour, and to move my body. Amazingly I doubled my walk this evening.
My second chemo went better than expected. It also helped getting fluids into my dehydrated system. Cindi has been counseling me to use creative visualization: the port is my friend and the chemo is a cancer killer. It sends little pac man who devour and destroy the cancer. Or as my friend Holly said, "Visualize the liquid filled with smart bombs that are hitting every single target. 100% success rate!" These, along with something my friend Rhonda sent: "strength, courage, grace" are now my mantras.
My two nurses have me on a schedule to manage the nausea and here it is early morning of the next day and I'm feeling pretty darn good. I pray each one gets easier. And the word chemo gets less scary to me each day.
Scott and Cindi keeping an eye on the chemo drip
