Chemo Day 1

Here is a mostly photographic record of today.  The dogs are very worried about their mom, who sits surrounded by cancer literature.

I brought a shirt for Peach, so we could both wear matching shirts to the first treatment.  For non "Outlander" fans, it says something about not worrying, in Gallic.

Kristie came to pick us up and, en masse (Kris, Bob, Peach, me), we headed off to the cancer center.  The first order of business was blood tests.

This is the port that was inserted (took 4 hours to do) last week.  It will allow them to put lines in for drawing blood and infusing the chemo chemicals.  Ideally, they should have been able to draw blood after inserting tubes into the port.

When it didn't work, they tried several different positions.

Finally they had to resort to the old fashioned methods

Next it was a meeting with the doctor, to get questions answered.

Then everybody moved into the room where the chemo chemicals would be administered.

(That's Kris on the left and her son Matthew on the right, who wanted to be here for his grandmother.  Like my feelings about Char's kids and how they behaved during and after Mike's death, I am very impressed with how Peach's children and grandchildren are rallying around her.)

Bob and Matthew went off to McDonald's to get lunch for us all, and Peach showed off her new Pink toes, symbolic of her first steps on this journey nobody wants to take.

There were emotional moments.

Matthew returned with lunch for us all.  We discovered cold McDonald's fries aren't very good.

The first treatment is very long and includes three different bags of chemicals infused over about 4 hours.

We spent time looking through a catalog of wigs and other head coverings, for when she loses her hair.

When another patient came to get his own treatment (he's a professional organist), the nurse moved our large group into a larger, single treatment chair room.  The chair here was much larger and Peach looked like a queen on an oversized throne/recliner (I wonder if Elizabeth II has a recliner....)

But ultimately at nearly 4 p.m., after being there since 9, the treatment was finally over!

We have two appointments tomorrow, an appointment on Friday, and another chemo treatment (this one only one bag, so it will only take an hour) on next Monday.

In the meantime, weather is still good, but they expect some snow flurries tonight.