Herceptin today--6 more to go!

Today I first met with Carol Riley to go over how I've been. She said I looked really well. I mentioned the slightly tingling toes and the achy lower ribs, but she only wrote down my eye twitching and the start of my period, which only lasted 2 days. I asked her about the nutritionist at Hopkins, but she said that the ones at Hopkins really deal with those in chemo having problem eating, not for eating well afterwards. She said my echo was fine. I wanted to know more about my mammogram results. She said that there were some calcifications in the mammogram, but most likely they were benign since they looked scattered and not clustered together. The followup mammo is in 6 months, but I have to check with her next week in making the appointment. She wanted to talk to Dr. Eisner, the radiologist, first. Calcifications make me uneasy since I don't have any on my normal side. They may have cropped up due to the surgery. I should try to get a copy of my mammo. Carol checked me out and felt the scar tissue behind the incision. She also scheduled me for the 6 Herceptins until Oct. and another echo.

I then went upstairs to get my Herceptin. Marybeth was there, and my Herceptin bag was already there so no wait. Apparently, there was a lot of commotion earlier in the day, and Marybeth said she would keel over if the bag was mine. Anyway, I found out that she got engaged 2.5 weeks ago, and she's having her wedding on July 11th! She'll be moving to San Diego for 3 years. I guess her new husband will be there. She was so great during the chemo treatments. I'm going to miss her.

Keshia was telling me about this great crab place she knows when she was putting in the iv. She put it in a new place, right on top of the bend in the right arm, but she didn't get it in correctly. Unfortunately, the saline went in the wrong place and formed a hard lump. It's a good thing that I told her it hurts a little before she connected me to the saline bag. In the end, she put the iv in "Old Faithful", the vein that has lasted throughout chemo until now. I'm very grateful for this vein because it means I usually only have 1 stick to get in the iv. Next time I'm not going to distract her with talk of crabs until AFTER she puts in the iv.

Yesterday I finished critiquing the 8 grants in cell biology that I was assigned with 1.5 hours to spare. That's not bad for those who know me. => I have 3 more to review as a reader. I'm just suppose to read the summaries, but I'll probably end up going through the whole thing. I haven't typed so much in such a long time. I realized that my spelling is going downhill. It takes me just a little bit longer to spell some words. I blame it on chemobrain. This Sunday I'll be heading to DC to meet the other reviewers and start going over the grants.