An Athlete's Journey Through Breast Cancer: A relative easy day at the Center

Drug trial day.

Stopped by the vampire's lair first. Vampire Paul is on vacation this week, so his cohorts did their best to ease my anxiety. Today they need to fill seven tubes, blah. And, they were the bigger ones, double blah. After what seemed like an eternity, all were filled and it was on to the next stop.

Today was a rather busy day so I had to wait for over an hour to see the doctor. Our main topic of discussion today was why I have had five echocardiograms in six months. The gist of the conversation is that they are being over precautious. He does not believe that there is any concern; I am young and athletic and my heart should be pretty strong. However, one of the remote side effects of the drug trial is potential damage to the heart. The percentage is quite low, but they would rather be more proactive in determining the condition of my heart now than later. I told him that I was having shortness of breath still and was a bit more tired these last couple of weeks. We discussed how that might also be due to the forced menopausal stage I am in. Not having normal hormone levels can do a number on the ole body. And those pesky menopause symptoms are no picnic. The hot flashes seem to be getting more intense and the water retention just plain sucks. He is going to refer me to a Cardiologist to have them do a stress echocardiogram to get a more true baseline of my heart.

Next stop, infusion for the lovely injections. Today is just a hypersensitivity test, so I will not be getting the normal dose. But, it is still four needles to the thigh which really is just not very fun. We put the lidocaine rub on while I was in the doctor's office in hopes that it will have enough time to set in and do the trick. But, alas it did not. I was happy that it wasn't the full dose because three out of the four went in with a vengeance. BLAH!! Injections 1, 2 and 4 hurt like nobody's business. For some unknown reason number 3 went unnoticed.