Another "Good" day makes a u-turn

Harriett has had some good days this week. Tuesday was Krissy's graduation and Harriett was able to go to her ceremony without any trouble and spent most of the day with the family. Wednesday morning she had the procedure to withdraw some bone marrow and that went well.

I was in the room when the procedure was done and this time I was the one that felt a bit queasy for a change. Harriett was on her left side facing the wall and the table of equipment was between me and the doctor. The doctor went through all the contents of the equipment packet and I sat and watched her pick up and examine some nasty looking mega-needles. Then she began the procedure by numbing up the area she would draw the marrow from. Harriett jumped at the first poke of the needle but after that she was numb enough that she only felt pressure. I, on the other hand, sat and watched the doctor jab her bone over and over again with the needle to make sure it's thoroughly numbed. She made a comment that the needle has been known to break during that part of the procedure.... ick!!!! Then she took a razor and made a hole for the needle to go in and then stuck a HUGE needle into her bone. That takes a bit of pressure. I watched as she pulled out two vials of fluid and then moved the needle adn took another little piece of marrow. All the time she was asking Harriett how she was doing and Harriett always said she was doing fine. Then she took all the equipment away and put a bandaid on the wound and that was that.

This was the first visit that the Onc realized we had moved here from Seattle. She had also lived in Seattle and worked/trained at the Hutch Cancer Center and then Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She lived in the same neighborhood we did, too. It was nice to make that connection with her and she shared this joke with us:

Three men were out camping. One was from Texas, one from California and one from Washington. The Texan had a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took a long drink from his bottle, threw it up in the air and pulled out his pistol and shot it. The other two asked, "What did you do that for?" The Texan replied, "I am from Texas and we have more than enough Jack Daniels!" Then the Californian took out a nice bottle of Napa Valley Chardonnay and poured himself glassful, swirled it around, sniffed it and then drank it down. He threw the bottle up in the air, pulled out a gun and shot it. The other two asked, "Why did you do that?" He answered, "I am from California and we make an incredible Chardonnay and have plenty!" Next the Washingtonian took out a bottle of microbrew (probably Red Hook), drank it down, and threw the bottle in the air. He pulled out a pistol, shot the Californian and caught the bottle before it hit the ground. The Texan asked, "What'd you do that for?" The Washingtonian said, I'm from Washington. We have way too many Californians and we recycle."

Today we went back to get the results of the marrow test. It was the best of the three things the Onc said it could be. It was breast cancer cells in the bone marrow. It was NOT leukemia and it was NOT Myelodysplastic Syndrome which can become leukemia. It does change the course of treatment but mostly in that we have to watch the platelet counts and her chemo therapy will depend on how high that is. If it is too low she will have a week off to allow her marrow to recover and build platelets. So she still is a candidate for the Taxol and the doctor then scheduled her for that chemo today.

So we left the doctor's office and ran home to get my bag of "let's keep Betsy busy at chemo" stuff and headed to the chemo center. I stopped at Starbucks along the way, but they were INCREDIBLY slow so by the time I got to the window I drove on through. I am not paying for coffee that takes 20 minutes to serve three cars!! We got on the freeway and Harriett got nauseated and threw up. (which is okay, because we have learned to be prepared in the car for such things). She was looking and feeling horrid. We got to the hospital and she began to lose it again. The nurse and the pharmacist came and talked to us and pulled a list of her meds, which by now are almost all anti-nausea meds. The pharmacist called the Onc to find out if it was okay to give her another pain med so she got morphine. The therapy starts with an antinausea and benadryl so they weren't really thinking about giving her more antinausea. It was so obvious how much pain she was in though. Eventually she was pretty much out of it but at least she felt better. When they called the Onc, she wanted to talk to me because she really couldn't believe that she had gotten that sick just in the time since we'd left her office. She said she was laughing and doing well there - could it possibly be anxiety? I'd thought the same thing and asked Harriett when we were still in the car and she said she wasn't more anxious than normal.

The pharmacist said that the pain med she was on was one that many people had problems with so the Onc prescribed a new one. I am praying that this will do the trick. I was having such a hard time seeing Harriett going through all this again. It's bad enough that she is as sick as she is - does she have to suffer every day, as well??