Brad & Noelle Koosmann & Family: 3rd Chemo Treatment

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned anything about the weather! (In my thankful blog I mentioned being thankful for our good fortune with the weather...I should have known better! It's like saying your kids are now sleeping through the night...right after you say something like that....BOOM!...they don't sleep through the night for months afterward!) Regardless of the snowstorm earlier this week, Brad and I did manage to make it to my 3rd chemo treatment. Brad's parents came and watched the kids overnight for us again, allowing us to get an early start to beat the snow. We made it to the cities, split a tuna hoagie from Davanni's (awwww...makes me think of my grandpa! Except he probably would have put ketchup on it!), ran to Target (because you have to go to Target when you're in the cities!) and made it back to my grandparent's house before the snow really started falling. In the morning when we woke up there was about six inches of snow on the ground, and it continued to snow most of the morning, but we allowed extra travel time and got to my appointments right on time. I had my labwork done, which showed my white blood cell count at 6.0, which is fantastic, and my hemoglobin is down a little bit, but that's perfectly normal and they expect it to continue to drop until I'm done with chemotherapy.

I followed labwork with an appointment with my Oncologist, Dr. Zander, and after my physical exam he informed us that the axillary nodes under my armpit are shrinking...hooray! By now we would know if I'm not responding to chemotherapy (1-5% of patients don't), so the fact that my axillary tumors are shrinking and my breast tumor isn't any bigger is an excellent sign.

Chemo came next, and we were blessed with another fantastic nurse. Brad and I had some Jimmy Johns while I was getting the nausea drugs and steroids. I don't know if it's the lasting affects of the stomach flu or just what my body has been going through, but food just hasn't been tasting the same lately, so I didn't eat too much of it. And then, unfortunately, I was able to somehow taste the Adriamycin and Cytoxan as I was getting it this time and that kicked in a whole new level of nauseousness (although I wasn't outright sick, thank goodness!) But we got through it and I ended up napping again in the chair while Brad worked on the laptop. We're not terribly exciting, but it's so nice to have him there. I couldn't ask for more.

After chemo we headed out of the cities and slowly made it home. The roads weren't too bad until we were west of Hutchinson and the drifting started, but we took it slow, and made it home in time for lots of hugs and kisses and a pork roast supper. Isn't life sweet?