Seventh Treatment

I had my 7th treatment yesterday. I begged them to not use the Heparin after they flushed the port. The heparin has been causing me most of my discomfort. It's that chemical I smell well after treatments and that alone makes my stomach turn.

I fell asleep in the chair yesterday (which I have never done before) and lost 2-3 hours napping when I got home. I had trouble getting comfortable at bed time last night and took a long time to find a spot.

I have been mostly dizzy since chemo yesterday which is a side effect of the Emend. The Emend still causes me to hic cup but the Nexium is helping with the reflux. I have my usual taste issues to boot but as far as smelling anything since yesterday, without the heparin, I'm happy.

On the days following chemo I end up eating lots of spicy food, salsa especially just because so much food tastes so bland. Dawn made shrimp scampy for dinner last night and it just wasn't "kickin" for me. I eventually snacked on medium hot salsa over cold left over spaghetti because unless my tongue feels the heat, I'm not tasting anything.

We also noted to the office yesterday that my hearing issues are getting worse. My left hear has a constant hum (left over tinnitus from a hearing problem last summer) I can only blame the chemo for making it worse. If I lay on my right ear at night I lose nearly all sound on my left.

We're working on building up everyone's knowledge of basic sign language, it's amazing what our daughter retained from when she learned "baby signs" as a toddler. Our son is getting better at it too. We figure some basic words will come in handy especially if we find ourselves at a certain distance from each other in a store perhaps or in my case when other noise conflicts with my hearing. Any extra back ground noise can interrupt my hearing altogether.

This treatment leaves me with 5 to go. One more after this one and I get a new CT scan. This CT scan should reveal all the cancer is gone. The remaining four treatments I am beginning to think are useless but since I'm not getting radiation maybe they serve a purpose.

But it feels more like without cancer left to kill all the drugs are doing is killing me. (we'll they're killing me anyway but once the cancer is gone what's left? Just Me!)