Starting chemotherapy

I was fully recovered from surgery by the middle of January (about 6 weeks), had my access port installed in my chest (December 26th), and basically had a vacation from cancer for a month. 

I felt great, no pain, no symptoms. If not for the MRI, CT and PET scans, I wouldn't even know I was sick. I finished up some projects at home, my daughter, Rowan, visited from Seattle (the boys loooooved this), and I went through a stack of paperwork about the upcoming meds. Lauren and I also spent this time preparing the boys for what was to come. The children's book My Dad and the Dragon has been a great resource to help them understand what life could look like during cancer treatment.

I qualified for the research study that involves a new drug that could reduce tumor size in colon cancer. Another tidbit I learned; mine is colon cancer. It doesn't matter that my colon is now clean and my liver has it... still colon cancer. The study drug had already gone through testing for esophageal, neck and head cancer, so it's not a blind study; I will be getting the actual drug (no placebos) in addition to my FOLFOX chemotherapy. This means I had an additional infusion day to start things off. 

Monday, February 10th I was in clinic at Utah Cancer Specialists for 10 hours getting my first study drug infusion. I was there when they opened and when they closed. On Tuesday, February 11th, I got my first chemo infusion. This felt like a pretty short day at 4 hours. They finished up, attached an additional bag, a pump, and sent me home for 2 more days of chemo infusion. This means that the pump is running chemotherapy meds through my port every 55 seconds for 48 hours. Once the bag is empty I go back into the clinic to get everything removed and I'm free from drugs until the next infusion day. 

Fortunately, moving forward, the study drug and chemo infusions can happen together. This means my infusion days will be 6 hours, once every two weeks.

At home the pump and chemo bag live in a fanny pack with a tube running to the port in my chest. I was running around, tidying up, folding laundry when the pump began a long sustained beeeeep. This was about 30 minutes before the clinic closed for the day, so I dropped the boys at the next door neighbor's and rushed back to clinic to get the problem solved. 

Our next door neighbors, Adam and Amanda, have two kids, Jack and Isla, that are really close in age to Emmett and Felix. It's been amazing having natural playmates in such close proximity; we even put a gate in the backyard fence so they can come and go freely.  They are truly a second family for the boys.

With the pump problem solved and instructions to slow down and take it easy, I just had to wait for the side effects to kick in.