Duke was quite an experience -- it's a huge facility, and the cancer wing consists of three big clinics, filled with patients all waiting to have their blood taken, have their vitals recorded, and (maybe, eventually, hopefully) see their doctors, THEN they will go upstairs and actually have their chemo treatments. It's kind of like a cancer factory. You sit and wait with all the other cancer patients -- all of us staring at each other, wondering: what kind does he have, how far along is she, why is he so skinny, is she as young as I am, and hey, where'd he get that cookie? Then some overworked nurse hollers (yes, we "holler" in North Carolina) your name, takes you back, takes your blood, and sends you back out again. Then you wait some more. Then, some other overworked nurse hollers your name, takes you back, gets your vitals, and sends you back out again. Then you wait some more. And if you are a patient of Dr. Blackwell's, you wait almost 5 hours. Then, repeat nurse hollering taking back, and you change into an ugly, chilly gown, and you sit in a cramped exam room with your mother and friends and stare at each other for another hour or so, and then, finally, your doctor arrives. And tells you to come back on Wednesday.
Dr. Blackwell is fierce and to-the-point. She wanted me to have an MRI to check the progress of the tumor(s) before she continued with the chemo, and before she assumed my care. She also wanted to switch me to a different drug, Taxol, which is a close cousin of Taxotere, which is what I thought I would be getting. She said she was more comfortable giving me Taxol every two weeks than Taxotere, and that if all looked good on the MRI, they could start me on Wednesday and I wouldn't be too much off schedule. SO, they managed to squeeze me in for an MRI at 9pm that night (did you know they do MRIs at 9 o'clock at night? They do.). AND, drumroll please, it looked FANTASTIC. The tumor in my lymph node showed significant shrinkage (not the phrase they used), and they couldn't even FIND any cancer mass in the breast. So, that was very exciting. And made the whole trauma of changing my flights and my travel plans and missing another day of work allll worth it.
So, I stayed in Raleigh an extra day and got to spend some good time with Jenn and Lisa and the family, and also got to see my lovely former professors Brook and Cindy, who drove to Raleigh from Winston-Salem to have dinner with me! It was great to see them, and great to be feeling well enough to have dinner while they were there.
Flash forward to Wednesday: Mom and I go back to Duke, repeat above factory process of waiting, hollering, bloodwork, vitals, gown, waiting, etc. Eventually the nurse comes in, gives me the good news about the MRI, examines me, talks me through the drug and the chemo and the next three appointments, and sends me on my way...without seeing my doctor. Hm. Not in Kansas anymore, I guess. I'll not be having that in the future, but at that point I just wanted to get going and get out of that damn hospital!
So I went upstairs to the chemo ward or lab or floor or whatever they call it, and waited some more (but up here they had puzzles and cookies and a computer -- much improved), and finally they led me across the hall and into the chemo factory. It was a huge room filled with beds around the sides and chairs all arranged through the middle -- not much privacy, but it was as nice as they could make it. Each chair was a comfy (vinyl) recliner, with its own little TV, lamp, and visitor chair next to it. The nurses were really nice, and there were various volunteers wandering around shaking your hand, offering you a coffee or a cracker, and asking lots of information about you and your mother and where you went to school and why didn't you go to Duke instead.
The nurse, when she ushered Mom and I to my chair, said she tried to get me a bed because it was such a long treatment, but that she wasn't able to. I said "How long?" and she said "Four hours" and I said "Come again?" Apparently this drug takes a lot longer to infuse. So much for catching that earlier flight! Anyway, so she pumped me full of Bendadryl, which immediately put me to sleep, and then started the IV drip. And four hours later, i was on my way back to Canada.
And, I am very pleased to report, taxol does not seem to hate me quite as much as the other drugs did. I haven't been sick to my stomach, haven't had too much heartburn, and have actually been feeling pretty good! I'm definitely achey a lot, crampy pains in my legs and back like I've had a really hard workout the day before (HA!), and I'm definitely tired. But I am not puking, and that is a lovely lovely thing. We followed up the taxol with another shot of Neulasta, which is the white-blood cell promoter that helps keep my immune system functioning while the chemo does its best to destroy every thing that moves in my body. Getting the Neulasata shot was a whole other adventure -- while Garrett's office had just been handing it to me, Duke wanted me to actually go get it from the pharmacy, which was all good and well until I found out the copay was EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS. Yes folks, that's right, this little shot that I jam in my leg every couple of weeks costs $3700, which means that my copay is $800. After I got up off the floor, I called Garrett's office and (God bless Garrett) they were able to FedEx the shot to me in Canada (God bless FedEx) and not charge me for it. HA, I've outsmarted CIGNA once again! At any rate, of course Canadian customs stopped the shot at the border and it took a whole song and dance for me to actually get my hands on the damn thing, but I did and I shot myself and all is well.
And as I write this I am sitting in the cozy living room of Melissa's parents' house in lovely West Simsbury, Connecticut, where I have journeyed from Canada, and I am feeling good, and I am on to my next city and still more than a week away from my next treatment. All is right in the world. (Except for the cancer. But we're working on that.)
Below is the only photo I have from this round -- a very lovely shot that Jenn snapped of me in the Cancer Care shop at Duke. Ah, the things you can get into when you're stuck in a hospital waiting room for five hours. I call it my Grey Gardens look.
(Needless to say, I did NOT make this purchase. But we got a good laugh out of it.)