Live Chemo Blogging!

2:30 p.m. - Today you get real time, live blogging from the chemo treatment room. Got to the center a little before 11 a.m. this morning and finally made it upstairs for the chemo. The initial wooziness from the Atavin has worn off a bit. We are about a third of the way through the two hour Oxaliplatin and Leucovorin infusion. Drips about once a second for one, and twice a second for the other. (exciting stuff, eh?) Here is me hooked up, and my infusion bags.

The terrific thing about having an implanted portacath is that I don't have to worry about how the chemo drugs will affect my veins. Two of my drugs are strong vesicants which can create chemical burns if they get on the skin, and can also weaken and collapse the veins themselves. This also puts me one implant closer to the cyborg singularity. I'm a good three steps ahead of most of you and therefore expect to be beloved by our new overlords when the time arrives. I would like to be called 8 of 14 when they've completed my assimilation. And I'd prefer my spandex a deep plum color.

3:10 p.m. - Bored. That's a majority of the time here in treatment. Stuck sitting here hooked up for 3-4 hours. The treatment chairs are all pretty tight together and that means it is often too loud and busy with family and visitors to read well. Or to read anything with substance, which is what I brought along today. But I also brought the laptop for the first time. Been catching up on email and FB. Will likely be watching movie trailers soon. I should have warned you from the beginning about the lack of excitement that this live blogging session would entail.

3:30 p.m. - Look what I can do with my web cam photo: (yep, that's the boredom stage we've hit)

Found out you can get Jimmy Johns delivered right to your treatment chair. Not the best lunch option, but delivery is certainly a perk when you don't have a minion on hand to run errands for you. And their oatmeal raisin cookie is good. Since I don't typically feel up to eating much post-chemo for a couple days, it's good to get as much food in me as possible beforehand and during. And since I'm freshly dosed up with three different anti-nausea drugs, my tummy feels great for noshing.

4:00 p.m. - I can see the sun outside just over my shoulder. This would have been a good day to go walk at the nature center. Too bad I wasn't given a choice... cake or death? Unless you're building an immunity to iocane powder, who is going to pick the poison option? Though in my medical case, cake = treatment and death, well it's just always death. Guess I am picking my poison. I hate when logic leads me back around to the less preferred case.

4:15 p.m. - The long hang is over. Now getting the bolus (bow-lus), aka 'push' of 5-FU before they bring out my pump for the rest of the 5-FU from now through Thursday. My ride is on her way and then we'll be done for this time around.

 And that's my pump. Now to pack up everything and head home for naptime! Thanks for joining me in this less than exciting live blog adventure. Two weeks from now, same bat time, same bat channel kids.