After my first chemo

 Monday was my first chemo treatment.

We got to the doctors office at 8 am on the dot.after the height and weight, we were ushered to the chair that I would be sitting in for the next 6 hours. I was introduced to Jody my nurse who was really warm and welcoming. She is tall with honey blond hair and later revealed that she is 60. I liked her,

She explained that I would be receiving 5 meds to take care of nausea. With each one she told me about side effects. When she started with the Taxol, the first chemo which would take 3 hours to drip into me, she explained how some people had side effects at first that is scary for the patient, but the nurses would surround me and take care if it. She didn’t think I would have any side effects. Hah!

Eight minutes in during a wonderful conversation about our lives, I started telling feel pressure on my chest and then all the nurses came and it was bedlam for about 5 minutes, wow! Eventually it was ok. My body started jerking every few minutes so she gave me more benzene (?) which made me immediately wanting to go to sleep and slur my words but jerking continued periodically. 

Anyway that was the worst of it. It did take all morning and I mostly slept and jerked. John was with me til 12:30 when he went to his small group and then he returned to take home.  Audrey popped in on her way home from a trip to see her Vanderbilt friends. She also is like sunshine to me. 

I came home to lots of political news and mostly sat on the couch. 

So it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for the first time but it wasn’t terrible either.

Now I live in suspension.  Apparently there are the first days in which I will feel normal or okay followed by a crash.  Waiting.  And trying to live my best life.  I am planning to try pickleball today feeling a little trepidation about it.  The people I play with are friends and if I come and leave immediately everyone will understand.  I know that moving my body and being with them will be helpful.  Healing comes in many ways.

What I know is this is just the beginning of a long journey.  It has already revealed how very much I love life and how friends and family really can sustain a person.  And. of course, there is faith.  There is the love that will not let me go and the Holy One who in mysterious ways guides my steps and refreshes me every day.  

And all will be well. 

By the way, a word about this blog.  I write always to myself first to reveal what I am feeling and I invite others into this time with me.  At the same time, I also write so that I can re-read what was in the past and I find great solace in that form of life review.

And I include prayers and poems that speak to my soul and can remain touchstones later. I include them so I do not forget them.  Here is one for today by Ted Loder

 

I pray to be steeped in silence until I fear it less

Eternal God, since silence seems to be
the voice of holiness, the only language
you speak directly,
then I pray to be steeped in it
until I fear it less and welcome it
as an usher to grace,
a narrator of sacred mysteries;
until silence cease the fretful conversations
of my mind with too little else than itself;
until silence calm my heart to an ease,
convene my senses to an anchored focus,
hush my tongue to a chastened hold;
until I discern in the silence
an answer to that necessary question
which, for the very life of me,
it has not yet occurred to me to ask;
until I am stretched alive and deep
to its dimensions, and catch,
at last and ready,
your assuring wink at me. Amen.