Melinda Update - Into Round Two!

Here we are, about 4 weeks after her lung cancer diagnosis and today she finished the last day of the second round of chemo!  This time, she took all 3 day's worth of chemo as an outpatient at the Cancer Center, which conveniently is only about a mile from our house.  As I said a week ago at our last update, she was really feeling well.  Now that the second round has been loaded into her, we're expecting a few days of nausea and tiredness headed our way.  Fortunately they also give her nausea medicine in an IV before the chemo, and other than a touch of queasiness this morning it has controlled it well.

The good news is that her new port worked great!  No bruises up and down her arm trying to find veins for the chemo to go in.  While they would have allowed her to get all 3 day's worth of chemo with a single port stick, she wouldn't have been able to shower, so they removed it after the first day when she went home, then left it in between days 2 and 3.  Unfortunately they did have to stick her for a blood test - an INR measures the clotting factor of the blood and the Heparin flush to assure her port was open would have affected the results.

The bad news is that she started shedding even her short hair last Friday in the shower, so went to the local hair cutting place for a buzz cut.  So she is looking significantly different, and mostly wears bandannas or scarves, even around the house.  I'm hoping for a photo-shoot with one of the calmer cats draped over her scalp - the good thing about that is she would have a choice of head cover of blond (Lucy, Hannah or Pixel or YellowCat), auburn (Annie), brunette (Hootie or HootieII), or calico (Mia)!