So What Did The Chemo Guy Have To Say???

Yesterday we made our way to Connie's 8:30am appt with Dr. Chemo. We spent 10 minutes with a nurse who had her weigh in right after findout out that Connie is actually 5'6", not the 5'5-1/2" that she always thought she was. She took her blood pressure, which was a bit high...but under the circumstances, not unusual. She asked her lots of questions and then had us wait for 10 more minutes until she sent in Becky, the Patient Advocate, who went over our insurance with us and helped clarify where we sat. We're thankful for our insurance!!! We then sat another 10-15minutes and another nurse came in to see if Connie would participate in a BYU study, which includes drawing a little extra blood only when she is having blood drawn anyway. Sure, she's in! If they ever call again asking for money because she and Whitney went to college there, she can honestly say she's given blood for her donation to the school.

Another 15 minutes and Bruce, the assistant comes in to go over all surgeries, timing of them and does a visual inspection of the incisions to ensure that she is healing properly. Another 30 minutes and Dr. Chemo comes in explaining that they still haven't figured out how to do a consult and get everybody into the room one right after the other so you don't have to hang around and wait for them forever.

Dr. Chemo explains everything nicely, dividing the piece of paper he has with him up into sections and re-explains terms that we heard with Dr. Radiation. Then he breaks off and begins to explain the different types of chemo that they would usually use...and then he explains about a study that just started about a week ago. Going into detail about that a little more, and the possible side effects, we're not too hot on the idea and opt for a treatment that is called TC, which is Taxotere/Cytoxan x4 (every 3 weeks). There is the possibility she may try it for 6 weeks...there's no proof that 6x will work better, but it was one of the options that they were trying out in the study. I just hopped over to another website to look up what TC meant and I got stuck there reading ladies stories who were all going through it together online. I had to tear myself away and get back here.

May 7th will be her first dose. As she says, "Happy Mother's Day to Me!" This gives her the chance to go to her yearly Women's Conference at BYU with her friend, Cyndi, and hopefully some others that she likes to get in trouble with. They usually stay somewhere else and for three days they are just doing their thing. I don't know how many years in a row she's gone, but it's got to be at least 10 by now.

She's feeling really good (except when she got a shoe caught and started tipping and had to stop herself with the wrong hand today...ouch!). As most have observed, she looks VERY good. It still is the calm before the chemo storm.