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Chemotherapy - Week 1

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Now that I am sufficiently healed from my surgery, I get to start my 6 months of Chemotherapy. Apparently there are lots of chemo medicines...a little fact that I didn't know.  I will be using Taxol and Carboplatin with the following schedule:  Week 1 - Taxol and Carbo combined; Weeks 2 & 3 - Taxol only; Week 4 - Off! I do expect to lose my hair somewhere between day 14-17.  A sweet friend who just finished chemotherapy for breast cancer threw me a hat/scarf party to help prepare for that.  It was such a great time to talk with friends and learn ways to cover my soon-to-be bald head!  I'm surprisingly ok with losing my hair. Of course, I haven't seen my bald head yet, so I imagine that might change.  The good news is that I'll be nice and cool this summer and, for the first time, I will get to experiment with hair styles of all lengths this fall! I just finished my first infusion on Thursday, March 23. I was more nervous for chemo than I was for my ...
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Week 2

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Week 2 has been much nicer than the first week...much of that is because I only got Taxol this week, rather than the two medications.  I only got really nauseous once and, while I'm still quite tired and taking lots of naps, the fatigue isn't as bone deep as it was last week.  I did have one day of extreme soreness in all of my muscles.  I felt like my body was one big bruise and it hurt to touch anywhere. That is one side effect of the Taxol and it mostly disappeared after one day. For those that have requested, here is a picture of my port.  It is just under my skin, under the collarbone of the left shoulder.  You'll see that there are three raised dots.  When I receive my infusions, the needle is placed in the middle of those raised dots. This makes the infusion a simple process and allows the medications to go straight into one of my veins. I went to a support group meeting today with my girls and it was a fun time.  One of the things th...
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Good News!

I have some great news I want to share!  Last week marked the beginning of the 4th month of Chemo. Because I had passed the half-way point, a new blood test was taken to see where my cancer markers were.  This is done to make sure that the chemo is doing its job.  The cancer marker test for Ovarian Cancer is the CA-125 test.  A normal range for CA-125 is below 35.  When I was first diagnosed, my score was 668.  After surgery, right before I first round of chemo, my score had dropped to 194.  As of last week, my latest score is a whopping 32! I haven't actually talked to my oncologist yet...I just pulled this score from my lab report online. When I was in the hospital following surgery, an oncologist came to visit with me and told me that the best outcomes happen when the CA-125 test is in the normal range at the half-way point of chemo.  That is what I have been praying and hoping for and I'm so relieved to see that it has happened! I look for...
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