First chemo

Jett had her first chemotherapy infusion on Monday. She approached it with a great deal of trepidation. She had, of course, heard all the horror stories of violent upchucking and generally feeling like crap. But she was committed to doing a minimum of one treatment, so Monday morning she got showered and dressed, took a deep breath and she went off to take her medicine. So to speak.

The day started at about 8 am with some preparation, including a review of her current medications (I have learned and brought a complete list, which moved things along). They measured her weight and height 3 times (important to get it right as the amount of chemo is carefully matched to physical size). 98 pounds, in case you were wondering, down from about 130 a year ago. Not good.

The infusion began with cleaning the port and injection of some drugs designed to calm her down and eliminate nausea. The “calm down” drug was Benadryl which actually makes Jett hyper – not quite the intended effect. But Jett decided to take it anyway and it was fine. I think it actually did calm her down as she was asleep about 15 minutes after the start of the 4-hour infusion. And she slept until it was over. I did puzzles and slept a bit myself. All in all, a very calm, quiet and drama-free infusion.

Our greatest worry was the morning after. We expected severe nausea but were delightfully surprised when there was none. She did have some tingling in her extremities and a slight headache, but very minor. A non-event, really. The headache was a bit worse the second day, but still not horrible.

Jett now says that she will gladly do more treatments if they are all this benign. That is important because her contract with me and her children was that she would try one treatment and after that it was up to her.