All set for chemo #6

I got my bloodwork results back. It seems that it's all normal so I'm ready to go. I already took my dexamethasone ( my steroid to prevent reaction to the taxotere). I thought that perhaps my platelets would be low again since I've had blood in my nose, not real bleeding, since my last chemo treatment.

I received e-mails back about the additional taxotere from my med onc and nurse practitioner. They both think that it's not necessary to have it, that the herceptin is more important for my treatment, especially since I've had some issues with the neutropenia and off liver enzymes. My gut feeling though is to have the additional taxotere. I'm already on it. My hair's already gone. I may as well have one more for the road so that I'll never have to come back to this point again. So tomorrow will not be my last chemo. It'll be my last carboplatin, which is great because it caused my platelets to drop and probably affected my fertility more so than the taxotere.

I met up with my YSC buddy, Katie, at Hopkins today. I haven't seen her since the start of chemo when my hair was coming out. She said that she would probably take the additional taxotere as well. She won't be coming to the conference, but at least I get to see her here. She told me how the er+/pr+ cancers tend to go to the bone, whereas the her2+ go to the brain. Katie also told me about her horrendous experience at Hopkins in taking out her port. The port is used to administer chemo so that you don't have to locate a vein every time and is put in surgically. Now that she's finished with chemo and Herceptin, she had it removed, but unfortunately, the apparently newbie surgeon had not seen the port inserted quite that way ( she had it put in at another facility). Basically, she had to argue with the surgeon to use the old incision site, and the anesthesia wore off before her surgery was complete. Just a bad experience all around. Yikes! Good News: she just turned 30. She honestly thought when she was diagnosed that she wouldn't be alive to see her 30th birthday.