During my first chemo yesterday I recorded a short video tour of the clinic but had technical difficulties uploading it that I fixed today. Sorry about the voice volume; I was talking softly to avoid bothering the other patients. Enjoy!

In other news, I have survived Day 2 of Chemo round 1 quite well. I woke up this morning again very early but managed to get back to sleep; but then again at 5am, so what the heck, I went for an easy morning walk and did some yoga stretches. It felt really good.

I would say that I had very mild versions of most of the fore-warned symptoms: headache, dry mouth, dizziness, and generally feeling sluggish. Fortunately I had only very mild nausea symptoms, so before my walk I ate a couple of saltines and brought some diluted Gatorade with me which did the trick. The only slightly concerning symptom I had was that my face and neck were flushed, a possible allergic reaction, which I monitored through the day. It did not itch or hurt or appear to be a rash, and by the afternoon it was mostly gone, so I did not call it in.

After my walk I had my usual breakfast and drove the kids to camp. I had some errands to run for Lane’s birthday party, and since every day is supposed to feel successively worse, I decided to get these out of the way while I could. I was really tired but walking around felt good, and getting shit off my to-do list always feels good.

I got home around 11am not very hungry, which is unusual for me as a “morning eater.” Word on the street is that breast cancer patients often gain weight (yay) during chemo since by now they have the nausea meds so well dialed in, and encourage good nutrition. We’ll see if my suppressed appetite without significant nausea sticks around, but for now, I’m totally ok with that, LOL!

I was, however, really tired. So I forced down a yogurt and took a nap. And MAN what a nap! I can’t remember the last time I slept that hard. I was out cold from maybe 11:30am to 3:30pm! And when I got up I felt totally refreshed, with nearly all the symptoms (except dry mouth / thirst) mostly gone. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I’d say this was a pretty good day! Better than expected.

Day 4 (Friday) is supposed to be the worst, so I’ll keep you posted.