I had slept very poorly the night before. I was scared and felt like I wanted to maybe back out of it. Then Chris showed up at my condo and was just so funny that I snapped out of being fearful and had fun spending the day with him.

We went to Kaiser early because I wanted a pre-chemo blood count. Typically they start checking your blood cells counts AFTER chemo starts but that was not good enough for me, I like to track my progress from the baseline. Since the line was long in blood draw, Chris made up this betting game for us regarding who would be called next so I even won $5 by the time it was over. As I type this I wonder: Did Chris ever work in a nursery school? All day he thought of quick little ways to entertain me when I was agitated.

Then we went to the chemo room. We were in a room with four other armchairs and various people came and went for their treatments. I am sad to say that the rest of the crowd was kind of dour and NOT amused by Chris and I guffawing over everything. Geez, what a bunch of sad sacks! You would think they had cancer or something!

They put the drugs in intravenously with a mix of water. It took about 3 hours including setting up my IV. My fave surgeon Dr. Stefanko is going to put a "port" in me for future tranfusions. It turns out I have bad veins and they hide even more when I am anxious.

Afterwords, I just felt kind of woozy and hungover. We got lunch and then I slept. Some nausea but the anti-nausea drugs seemed to work pretty well. Unfortunately, last night I slept VERY poorly because one of these drugs gave me "restless legs" for about FIVE hours. It totally sucked. I could not sleep and felt frustrated that my legs would not stop intermittently shaking.

But finally I slept and here we are at Friday. Most of the day I have felt hazy and sleepy and not like doing much.

That's today's story! Will write more when I am able.

Carolyn