First Chemo Session

Today was Neil's first chemotherapy session. We arrived early this morning and we just got home going on 4:00. It was nice that they put us in a private room since it was his first time so that we would feel comfortable asking questions.

First, they had to do a complete blood count. His white blood count was high, so the nurse had to call Dr. Mehta (his oncologist) to get permission to move forward with the chemo. This all took about an hour and a half.

The nurse was AWESOME. Her name is Judy and she is an 8-year breast cancer survivor. She spent all day with us and explained everything--not just from a medical point-of-view, but also from someone who went through what Neil is going through. She talked us through all of the drugs as she brought them in. The first took a half hour. The next was "big red" or "the red devil." This was injected using a humongous syringe. It's a really bright red color and it's the really wicked one. Since all the drugs were given through his port, I could see it all go in through the tubes. This is a photo of it being given to a Hodgkin's patient. The third drug was a photosensitive one they had to cover with a brown plastic bag and it was given over two hours. The final one took a half hour, then the nurse flushed the port with saline solution. Right now, Neil is sleeping. They don't expect him to feel ill until Sunday--if at all. Some people don't even get the nausea, and I'm really hoping that's the case with Neil. If he is to lose his hair, it will be within the next two weeks.

It was a pretty emotional day and we're both spent, but it also feels good to be on the way to getting rid of this nasty cancer.

On the upside, we watched about six episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond today :-)!