Treatment #3 August 1st 2012

Yes, summertime is still here. Here’s me outside the hospital with my mom.

At the hospital, there’s a nice waiting area with magazines and a volunteer brings coffee or tea. Just past 11 three of us were taken to a room with green chairs, and again the lovely view outside. A young woman was already there with a friend, she looked younger than me.

The nurse accidentally cut her foot while moving a chair and yelled out and jumped up. She was bleeding but fortunately enough she had plenty of bandages. Her vacation starts tomorrow and although she was very nice and alert, she would occassionally say she was very much looking forward to the pool at her vacation spot. Sure sounds good to me!

It all took much longer today since she had to take care of all three of us at the same time. The good news was that she got the cap on in no time – we stuffed two washcloths in the sides, I held on to the green snakey hat (made up of green coils through which the freezing liquid streams) while she pulled the yellow helmet over the top. She strapped it on, put my ski band across and that was that. Took no more than 4 minutes.

So then I have to wait 45 minutes till the scalp is cold enough. It took a while before I got the first IV (with salt solution). Ofcourse when the chemo should have been added they were all out to lunch. A young nurse came in, attached it, and waited for ten minutes. She explained when another lady asked that because the chemo I have is rather aggressive, they have to wait in case something happens.

Like last time, this only took about 25 minutes. The cap then has to warm up because if you take it off, my hair would be frozen en stuck to the side and that would pull it out anyway. At that moment, Trees came in. She and her husband are friends of our friends and neighbors Marijke and Peter. Trees was in good spirits. They’re going away on a short holiday and she had two-three hours of chemo today.

The other ladies in the room explained they all had side effects, one lady really had a bad time. I feel so lucky that I’m not yet feeling bad. On the contrary, apart from insomnia (for which I get pills to help me fall asleep) and eyes that burn occasionally I feel nothing at all, no nausea, no pain, no vomiting.

Here are some pictures of us in the park (Groeneveld) afterwards:

   

Because I don’t want to spam too much, I haven’t blogged as much as maybe I should have.

Here’s a picture of my cousin Ineke and her son Luc, me, Naut (standing) and Valentijn (on the right) last monday (July 23rd), taken by Nancy:

Yesterday I met Ingrid and Carien at the teahouse ‘t Hoge Erf in Lage Vuursche and we had apple pie and coffee, tea and hot chocolate (me!). With whipped cream. Carien came in with her finger bandaged. And she had just returned from vacation in Spain with 8! teenagers. So we asked what had happened. Well, she said reluctantly, her finger was caught in the door and the top cut off. So she pulled it out of the door and put it back on her finger. Fortunately, one of the kids had a drivers license and took her to the hospital. What a horrible story! I can’t deal with things like that, this really freaked me out. To top it off, the surgeon at the hospital wouldn’t tell her if he had sewed it back on and she couldn’t see because it was bandaged again.

It turns out he did save it. What a vacation!

 

We’re going to the Ardennen on Friday with Barbara and Valentijn and staying till Sunday. We’re staying at La Passarelle near Durbuy and our good friends Michael and Teresa from San Diego (Teresa and I worked together at HP from 1995-1998) are driving up from France. I’m really looking forward to it. Ciao!

Photo credit: Nancy Ghosh!!! Thanks Nanc!