Last Chemo treatment

David Poncelow — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:54:00 +0000

I received my last treatment of Taxol yesterday. It went well, and it’s such a relief to have that part of all of this over with. It was a pretty easy treatment… the Taxol always seems like such a long time, as it goes in over three hours. That plus the visit with the oncologist, the blood test beforehand, and all of the pre-medications makes it stretch out interminably. I sat in the treatment room with a rather nice and enjoyable (and talkative!) guy this time.

The nurses were all so sweet, too- they brought me a piece of cake with a candle in it and sang ‘happy last treatment to you’ to me. I know that I’ve gone on about how well taken care of I’ve felt at Swedish, but I really have been cared for by some remarkable people.

Of course, now that the chemo is done I get to start in on the rest of the treatments. Everything from here on out comes all at once. In two weeks I meet with the radiology oncologist for my radiation consultation, getting all set up for that bit. The treatment itself will start in three weeks, so I’ve got a little bit of time off. Unfortunately Ballard doesn’t have the equipment to do the radiation treatment, so I’ll be heading downtown for that part. It shouldn’t take too long for the treatments, but it’s going to be every day for six weeks. Luckily the downtown campus is on my way to work, so hopefully I’ll be able to do these treatments on my way too or from work.

In three weeks I’ll start getting my first Herceptin treatments as well. According to Julie (the nurse that usually takes care of me) this will be a piece of cake. No real chemo-like side effects, and it should take only about an hour to pump in with no pre-meds. So it will probably be only a morning rather than the full day that it has been. I’ll be doing that one every three weeks for the next year. At the same time I’ll be starting up on the hormonal treatment. tamoxifen. I’ll get that one for the next five years or so.

It’s such a relief to be moving on to the next step. More to come.

Z80 - The Diagnosis Is Not Consistent With The Gender of the Patient: Tag taxol

Last Chemo treatment