Round Two

Week three of my round one recovery was fine.  The salt taste was gone from my mouth, which was wonderful.  I tried Panda Express again, and it looks like it will be quite a while before I eat there again.  These drugs have changed my taste buds for a while.  The biggest thing I noticed this week was that despite getting the same amount of sleep, and even a little more, fatigue kicked in...BIG TIME.  I've never actually been so tired that it was difficult to keep my eye lids open, but here we are.

Yesterday was my second chemotherapy treatment.  Thankfully, it went much better than the first.  The Benadryl was pumped in first, before any other drug.  Since they didn't need to pump it in fast to help counteract my reaction to the chemotherapy drugs, it was able to go in A LOT slower, and where I still felt it, it didn't put me to sleep.  After that they did another anti nausea medication, and one more that I can't remember.  Each of those drugs took 20 minutes, so I was there for an hour before we even got to the chemotherapy drugs.  All in all this round took about 4 hours.  I was able to sleep during half of it, so that was nice.

Looking back at my notes from the first round, I knew that bone pain was first on the list.  My doctor gave me a prescription to help with that.  As of now, I haven't had much bone pain at all.  My doctor did say that my body may not react quite the same since I've already had the drugs once.  It now recognizes them.  I've also kept taking Claritin each day, along with another immune system pill, which I'm guessing will also help.  

Last Wednesday, what I'd been waiting for finally happened...big time.  My hair started coming out.  It started off small, like in the first two pictures.  You've seen the 3rd picture.  I decided to help the hair loss process along and just pulled it out.  The last two pictures were what happened in the shower the next two days. 

After this HUGE round of hair loss, this is what I looked like:

It's weird how patchy it came out.  Guess I thought it would come out evenly.  Most of my hair was still in the front.

The rest of the week my hair slowly came out.  Each day I needed to clean out my hats and caps since I was losing hair each day, and clean off my pillow each morning.  As of this morning, here's what my head looks like:

So in one month, I've gone from hair before the cut, to hair after the cut, to hair after buzzing it all off, to hair after the main purge, to how it looks now.  That's a lot of different looks in 4 weeks!  I am almost COMPLETELY BALD!

I'll keep my eyes on my temperature the next few days.  Luckily, Brandon isn't magically sick this round, so that's one less thing to worry about.  Round three will be on June 10th, so technically 4 weeks from now instead of 3.  Why, you may ask?  Because my New Kids on the Block concert is on June 8th and I refused to have any treatments around that time.

Speaking of that concert, it is only 3 1/2 weeks away!  I bought this hat to wear the day of the concert, and I love it! 

I saw this poster in another NKOTB video and it hits home now.  I'm thinking about making a shirt that says this, except it wouldn't highlight Donnie, since he's not my favorite!  I'd probably say something like, "Cancer sucks!  Came to see NKOTB anyway!"  Any thoughts?

Here's to hoping this week is easier.  I have to go back to work Monday, so I won't have a week to sit at home and deal with everything.  Luckily, since we're so close to the end of the year....14 SCHOOL DAYS LEFT, the week is pretty easy.