Ok so Round 3 wasn't quite as smooth as the previous one but I'm happy to say I'm home, for the second time, and am feeling immensely better :)
It started off okay. I went in with high spirits and all was progressing nicely. One day while walking laps I got on the scale in the hallway... you see I'm obsessed with scales now because I'm so thin and it's such a treat to see those low numbers ;) Hey you gotta find the perks where you can in this journey! So I pop on the scale and up comes a big red blinking 141. What?! Wait a minute... that's my old weight! Scale must be off. So I shuffle off to the other side of the floor and climb on that scale. Same number! Yikes, better let my nurse know about this. Turns out I had indeed gained about 23 pounds in fluids. Dr. X wanted to be sure my kidneys stayed good and flushed so she really had the fluids pumping. A lasix pill and lots of trips to ladies room put me back at my current weight of about 118 :) A couple people have told me I looked a bit like a cherry tomato in the face with all that fluid. Ha ha ha!
Friday night. I'm feeling pretty good and am anxious to get home and settle in and eat my own food. Hospital food is just yucky for some reason... I was eating just fine but really wanted to be home. I usually stay until Saturday morning but X agreed I could go. Off I went and being home felt great. I slept so good Friday night and woke up feeling pretty decent Saturday. Didn't think to take my anti-nausea medicine and the next thing I knew I was s-i-c-k. Hit me like a ton of bricks. Every time I barely moved I was violently ill. I should have called X right away but for some reason I thought it would pass. It didn't. When Louisa came by in the afternoon, she took one look at me, called X right away and off to the hospital we went.
Thank goodness the lovely nurse, Annette, was still in the Out-patient Infusion Room at the hospital so I didn't have to endure the whole ER admit nightmare. Annette started IVs of fluids and anti-nauseas. I had to be readmitted and spent 2 more nights in. I'm pretty sure these were the toughest days yet for me. Turns out my blood sugar had really dropped as well so I had zero energy. Just standing up was difficult. But as amazing as our bodies are, I have bounced back once again, with the help of some sugar water and sterioids. I came home yesterday and feel remarkably good again. I'm taking my anti-nauseas ;)
Right now the plan is to have my fianl round the beginning of July. X says she's thinking of ending with a big bang...?! kind of scary but she knows best! She has apologized profusely for this round making me so ill and has a gameplan in mind for next time to avoid this from happening again. I told her we both were over confident with Round 2 having gone so well. She also mentioned I will be seeing a Oncology Radiologist for an evaluation after my final round. The source tumor was a very slow growing tumor vs. the crazy fast growing offshoot one. Chemotherapy works best on fast growing tumors. They Tumor Board regulary reviews my case and they feel it may be advantageous to to some follow-up radiation. Nothing set in stone yet, just an evaluation when all is said and done. X promised the radiation, while it can have it's own side effects, does not generally produce nasuea ;) Fair enough!
Well peeps, this is a long blog and I'm getting a little pooped. I can not believe it's already the middle of June. Wow. Big shout out to Tate Thomas Oakely who will be turning 2 in 2 weeks (June 30)! Happy Birthday my sweet Grandson. Love you so much!!!
Love you all as well!!! xoxo Reba
