A day in the life

I'm always talking about how Wednesdays are DF days, but this time around, instead of telling you, I figured I'd show you! And so it begins: bright and early, the alarm goes off.






It's too early even for Scamp.





It takes 40 minutes to get to DF from Concord, but with morning traffic, I need double the time.




While I'm stuck in traffic, I blob on this numbing cream and seal it with a bandage over my port. It's supposed to numb my skin so I can't feel the needle (yes, I'm still a complete needle-phobe!) but it doesn't always work.... Still trying to perfect that one...
Once I finally make it to Dana-Farber, I'm greeted by these two lovely ladies and check in to the infusion room. I'm such a regular I don't even have to hand over my patient card; I'm like an infusion VIP.... Ha.


Then I get my vitals taken: weight, blood pressure, temperature, and pulse.





My incredibly awesome nurse, Jeannine, accesses my port and draws my blood to send the samples right off to the lab for processing. She's only wearing a mask because she was getting over a cold this week.

This week, I worked all afternoon the day before hanging over 500 paintings for the painting sale that's happening this weekend. Needless to say, I was pretty tired.

My blood results usually take about two hours to come back, and then I get hooked up for fluids and chemo. I know it's not super obvious, but here's me, all plugged in to the IV on the left.




This week though was extra special. Because it was my second to last week? Oh no, my dears, because I had a bone marrow biopsy! And I exclaim that with the greatest amount of sarcasm possible, in case it wasn't obvious. Here's Dan, my genius oncologist, doing I don't know what to the back of my hip. Go ahead, click on the pictures and a new window will open with the full size image. I told you the pictures would be gritty, and I didn't lie. In the second one, Dan's extracting one of multiple samples of bone marrow. My face isn't totally visible, but let's just say I left some mascara stains on the pillowcase...
These are what the samples look like. Dan took three samples of my marrow, a piece of my bone, as well as some other sample, but I forget what it was exactly. It was all labeled, recorded, and off to the lab for tests, tests, and more tests.

36 hours later, my hip hurts. It's been about a year since I've had a biopsy and I forgot how bad they were. I used to say that it wasn't so much pain as it was uncomfortable. I take that back. It hurts. There was pain. There is still pain. But I'm definitely glad to have it over with.