Happy New Year!!!

I hope you all had a great Christmas, celebrating the birth of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ! Also, I hope you had a great and safe New Year's Eve and an even better 2012!!
I have been busy with the kids being home the past few weeks. I called my oncologist and asked him if I could postpone chemo for a week because I had the boys home from school for Christmas break and he said yes!! So instead of going every other week to chemo, I had an extra week off!

Dec 27th~ I went in to see my oncologist for a regular appointment to make sure my numbers were good enough to do chemo the following day. Everything was pretty much normal, except he did mention in passing that some of my cancer numbers are going up, while some were still going down. He said not to be too alarmed by it because I had been off chemo for so long and only had it 1 time since. Of course this freaked me out on the inside, but I kept it to myself.

Dec 28th~ Chemo time!! It was a normal chemo day for me. Jon took me as usual. I wasn't nervous or anything! So, they start my pre-chemo cocktail of prilosec, zofran, benedryl and another drug to help with the chemo side effects. After that was done the nurse came in and let me know she was starting the chemo. I told her fine and continued reading the book I was into. About 30 minutes into it, I started having trouble breathing! Then I notice my heart was racing! OH NO! A panic attack!! I tried calming myself down and its not working, Then, my throat starts getting really dry and I feel my face and neck turn red. At this time, Jon was on the phone and didn't notice what was going on. I tried to calm myself down and was wondering what brought this on anyway, when I heard Jon say, "Something is wrong with Christi!" and he hung up on the person he was talking to. He ran out to get the nurse and when they came back, she seemed a little panicked and said it was an allergic reaction to the chemo. She ran out of the room and came back in with what seemed like an arm full of medicine. She stopped the chemo and put me on saline to flush me, then she started shooting the meds into my IV. She told me it was more Benedryl and steroids. About 45 minutes later, I was completely back to normal! The nurse then informed me I can never use that type of chemo again. She said that sometimes what happens is between the 8th and 12th round of a particular drug, your body realizes it is poison and in turn, this happens. Well this just so happened to be my 10th time! So, after I calmed down, they called my oncologist and they asked him if he wanted me to continue with the chemo that I do at home and he said yes. They hooked me up with my pump and sent me on my merry way!

Dec 29th~ I was up all night from the steroids. The nurse said it might happen, but I couldn't believe it! I was staring at the ceiling all night with my mind racing. That afternoon, I still had so much energy compared to when I usually have chemo that I was doing laundry and cleaning up a little with my pump. Well, what happens, I bang my pump on the counter top super hard and it starts going off! I try turning it off, resetting it, NOTHING!! So now what?? I have to call the infusion center and act like I didn't know what happened! LOL!! So they told to take the battery out and come in. I get there and they put the battery back in and it starts working. OF COURSE!! So, they tell me to go sit down in the waiting room and make sure that it doesn't start going off again. While I am in there, a girl walks in and she is about 5 years older than me or so and she has her pump in a cute little purse (instead of the geeky fanny pack they give you to use), so I ask her where she got it from. We start talking and we find out we are both stage 4 colon cancer. She told me that they actually gave her 2 years and she had just past that mark. She also said that she had cancer in her liver and lungs too! She just had surgery on her liver in August. She said I really need to watch out because the cancer in her liver was dead, but 60% of her liver was calcified and they had to remove it!! The scary part was the drs didn't even know it was calcified before they went into surgery! She has chemo on Tuesdays also, so I will be looking for her from now on!

So, that was my adventure! Please pray that the next chemo will work as well as the last one did. I do want to also thank everyone for their gifts, prayers and thoughts the past 6 months! I honestly could not get thru this without every ones support and love. It also helps having such an awesome church family! They raised over $4800.00 for our medical bills this past month! Thanks again and as always keep praying, God is listening!!!