First Chemo Therapy Session

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Laura got her first dose of chemo therapy on Friday, June 19, 2009 at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. She met first with Dr. Jay Agarwal in the U of U hospital, clad in her blue BYU tee shirt. Dr. Agarwal’s assistant added 80 cc’s of saline to the expander. After more blood samples to verify her white blood cell count, she met with the medical oncologist, Dr. Saundra Buys. After reviewing the blood sample results, Laura was deemed healthy enough for the first dose of chemo.

The infusion room at the HCI is long with a large window facing a garden on the hillside. There were about a dozen other patients getting chemo, each seated in a reclining chair with its own TV and refreshment tray. Volunteers brought juice, books and whatever else the patients needed. Laura was given Doxorubicin (Adriamycin) and Cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan). Both were given through an IV. These are the Chemotherapy drugs. She was also given prescriptions for Zofran, Decadron and Emend as the anti-nausea medications. The process took nearly 3 hours to complete. As we were leaving the nurse said we will see you in three weeks and you will probably be in a scarf. We were home around 7:00.

Laura felt a little dizzy and light headed, but otherwise pretty good. She even ate a little in the evening. We were brought a wonderful pork chop meal by one of our incredible neighbor families. Laura had a rough night. She was awake off and on with nausea, but never did throw up. Around 2:30 AM she was the worst, not wanting to move and was hot and sweaty. But, she slept OK and awoke feeling hungry. She ate a bagel and drank some grape juice and felt mostly well all day on Saturday. She is tired and weak but not bad, considering. So far, Laura is thinking that it wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow may be different, but we are hopeful that the worst is over. We’ll see.