Treatment #1 - to vomit or not to vomit?

Man I would have liked to vomit. That's what I kept thinking, but in reality I think that would have been a downhill spiral.
The infusion itself was rather painless. They gave me lidocaine cream to put on my port site since it had been put in only two days prior. Of course I forgot to put it on the prescribed 40 minutes before, so as we are getting off the highway in Syracuse Ben was leaning across the car to try and help me peel my port dressing off (some seriously sticky saran wrap stuff) while I am trying to navigate traffic.
We gave up!
In the parking garage I applied the lidocaine and a new layer of saran wrap over it, actually press and seal wrap because that's what I had. Press and Seal doesn't really stick to your body as well as it does glass bowls, if you were wondering.

We joined the troops of chemo patients waiting outside the infusion room. These are some tough peeps! But Ben made sure to note that I was the youngest, by far, in the waiting room. When he said that all I could think of was the Pediatric Oncology department upstairs and how I am so grateful this is me, not my child.

The nurse quickly realized I had put the lidocaine over the incision site, not really the port site, as that's slightly higher than the incision. In the OR they taped my boob to my belly to get the skin to sit more like it would when I sit upright...there's some serious gravity there. The port procedure had a lot of pomp and circumstance, but was actually really easy.
So the nurse reapplied lidocaine and let it set in while she got things ready. Accessing the port was slightly painful, the port incision is still painful today, a week later, but the access to the port was just a strong poke and it was all over. That poke was much better than the twisting and poking and prodding that I've experienced with some blood draws and IV's.
The infusion was simple, but awful to see (think monster blood getting injected into you.) All the while I kept telling myself that I should be thinking happy thoughts about how this goo is going to kill the cancer, but that train of thought was hard to keep.
They did the Adriamycin first and the nurse has to sit and administer that by hand, no biggie. Then the Cytoxan which can cause nasal congestion/pain. They slow down the Cytoxan to try to eliminate that sinus discomfort. It did cause some burning, but nothing horrible.
We left after 2 1/2 -3 hours and were on our way home, feeling good.
Where do we stop for lunch?
My co-worker and others had warned me that what I ate after might become my least favorite food.
We chose the old fashioned A&W in Cortland...I don't think I will ever eat there again, or any A&W for that matter.
I felt fine eating, we stopped at Walmart to get a bed rail for converting Quinn's crib into a big girl bed so I won't have to pick her up out of it anymore.
Got home, felt a little tired, kids came home, started feeling a little yucky, kids left with Grammy for the night, sat and talked with my parents, felt a little sicker, they left, Ben came home, I started tapping my hands under my 3 blankets to alleviate the desire to vomit.
Cold and need to vomit, was all I could think. Ben ate food the neighbor had brought over and I covered my face to avoid the smell.
Ben, or Nurse Ratchet as I like to call him, called the nurse hotline because I had taken Zofran, but couldn't remember the order in which I was supposed to take the other anti-nausea/anti-anxiety meds. The Zofran wasn't doing a damn thing is what I kept thinking. So sequentially I took 2 more meds throughout the evening and successfully avoided throwing up...Yay...I think.
Saturday morning we started the same med routine and I was actually able to stop the tapping and ticks that had been helping me stay sane the night before. I was actually able to take a bite here and there and keep drinking the water that every breast cancer survivor has harped on me to drink, no matter how horrible it seemed.
I battled chills some that day until early afternoon when my face got red hot and like clockwork my delayed release steroid beeped on my arm and began releasing. I thought, oh good the steroid will help me eat again.
Not so much! Ben would offer one food and I would think "maybe" and then one bite and I was over it, take it away, don't make me look at it, think about it or smell it! But I kept drinking and by Sunday Ben realized I liked "screwdrivers" or his version anyway, seltzer and orange juice (Dandy minimart oj works, but it's not as tolerable) and he could peel an orange and get me to eat it.
Ben successfully attended a preschool gymnastics birthday party where cupcakes with cotton candy on top were served on Saturday, and he escorted Will to 4-H on Sunday where they successfully created a string art project that they are both very proud of. I slept nearly all day Sunday.
Monday morning was still a little yucky, but my energy was better and by mid-morning I started eating scrambled eggs, success!
The rest of the week has been on the uphill swing, other then the mental/emotional toll of thinking about what the future treatments will be like.
We have enjoyed our two snow days and the love keeps pouring in from friends I haven't connected with in a long time and strangers that have been introduced into my life to help me cope with this diagnosis. I've spent an hour on the phone in the last two days with a woman I've never met, talking about life and cancer, boob surgeries and telling our kids about cancer without scaring them to death. I don't talk on the phone much so that's an accomplishment. And numerous messages checking in on me from other BC patients, some strangers and some not.
In the meantime I've also talked with a Netflix producer about filming on our farm, I've contemplated it long and hard, but decided to decline. Weird!
And this afternoon my Grandmother (Joyce) was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer....PLEASE no sympathy for me regarding this. She was hospitalized Monday for swelling in her legs and more confusion than normal. After a CT Scan they know she has cancer and believe it to be in her liver and lungs. She is in her mid-eighties, has multiple health problems, but has been adamant about living on her own. Her decades of nursing in long-term care left her with the feeling of never wanting to experience that herself. Unfortunately my Mom and her siblings will carry the added weight of coping with decisions regarding her care.
I love Grandma Joyce, but we have also seen a downward spiral in her quality of life in the last 5-10 years and I am struggling with the mental clarity to understand how I feel about this. It's only been one or two hours of knowing this diagnosis...
AGAIN PLEASE keep the sympathy on the down low, pray in your home, send me a smiley face text once in a while, but let's not talk about Grandma for a little bit ...