Cycle #1: Days 4 & 5 - Living Strong

Days 4 & 5 were better than I expected them to be. I thought after day 3 with the steroid reaction and the Neulasta bone pain in the skull (which did actually get worse before getting better), I might be in for a crazy ride for a couple days but thankfully things turned out to be OK. Halfway through the day Friday I decided the skull crushing headache was absurd - that I shouldn't suffer silently and not seek a remedy - that it deserved a little whining to the doctor. So I gave him a call - disguised the whining in the form of a question "So, doctor, what type of over the counter product might possibly take the edge off of..." Dr.B explained that the pain is from the bone marrow inflammation pressing against the bone and he said that some women, often young women, experience the bone pain the worst in their face/sinus area, but that most people feel it more in their sternum, back, etc. He said to alleviate the pain I would need an anti-inflammatory medication like Aleve or Advil and that I'd need to take double the stated dose on the box but he gave me what my max daily limit should be for it. For Aleve, he told me to take no more than 4 pills per day - 2 pill dose, 12 hours apart. So that's what I did and I felt soooooo much better within just an hour or two. Since I don't take the steroids beyond day 3 of each cycle, I got to skip the hot flush of the face and neck the last two days - bonus! LOL. I even managed to supervise the purging of a few closets in preparation for a garage sale we had this morning. My tummy has been a tangled mess since taking the pain meds from the port procedure at the beginning of the week and this morning when I got up I thought for a minute that I might see a bit of the nausea that I have watched people experience with chemo. I decided I didn't want to chance a stroll down that path and quickly gobbled up a Zofran before heading downstairs for breakfast. It was going to be a long day (garage sale day) and there was no way I was going to let a pretty smooth first chemo cycle turn into something else. Thankfully, it worked and there was no queezy wheezy pukey dukey nonsense going on here. The garage sale was a great success. We didn't even have a ton of big items like furniture or anything to sell - just a whole lot of stuff we didn't want or need anymore - and I still managed to raise enough money to pay for my portion of my double-mastectomy surgery (I have GREAT medical insurance but I still have to pay 10% coinsurance up to a certain limit) which was not cheap. Writing that check to the surgeon's office will be less painful knowing that I have a giant wad of singles and fives to cover it. LOL. Seeing most of the stuff not come back into the house was priceless though - good to purge. Time to find my friend, Aleve, and call it a night. Love and blessings to everyone!