I have been woefully remiss in “keeping up with myself”… however, this means that I should have lots of updates, right? So, moving on to the good stuff…

Going back to the last round of the nasty Docetaxel that I received on October 12th, I can start by reporting some good news…I did not end up at Emerg…I repeat, I did NOT end up at Emerg! This was a breakthrough on my part. By increasing my liquids and making sure that I wasn’t overly bundled up in my comfy clothes, I managed to keep my temperature below the Danger Zone of 38 degrees. I did register temperatures that were a bit feverish for about a day, but nothing registered high enough that meant having to visit my local hospital. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent facility with wonderful staff, but I feel I’ve already spent enough time there for this year!

What was more challenging is that the last round of Docetaxel really knocked me off my feet. For the other rounds of chemo, I have typically bounced back within a week, but the October 12th round really took a toll. It was almost two weeks before I felt “normal” again. Meaning my “chemo normal”, not my “normal normal”! And of course there were other fun things happening like losing the ability to taste. Everything tasted like metal for about 10 days. There was zero flavour and basically everything tasted the same…BAD!!! Thankfully that issue rectified itself eventually, so I can now enjoy consuming food and drink again 🙂

I had my 7th and last “big” treatment at Princess Margaret this past Thursday. This treatment consisted of the last dose of Perjeta (the $20K drug) along with a dose of Herceptin. The good news is that with these drugs I don’t need to get the immune-boosting injection of Neulasta. And while there are still side-effects from the two drugs,  they are not knocking me out the way the Docetaxel does, so these last few days have been a lot more pleasant.  I’m pretty tired, my legs are quite sore and I’m fighting off a cold, but at least I feel significantly more human that I have after the other treatments!

This round has also been made more pleasant with a visit from my friend Heidi who has flown over from the U.K. to help take care of me this week. Heidi and I met on our first day of Grade 11…so that was a few decades ago! We haven’t always lived in the same town, province, or even country, but somehow our friendship has lasted 29 years. And since she’s been living with me for three days and we haven’t killed each other yet, I think we are on track for at least another 29 years, if not more!

All in all, I’m looking forward to the rest of this week. And the countdown continues…by this time next week I will be in the recovery room post-surgery! Surgery day – November 14th – is coming up fast, and I’m still pretty excited about it. I’m sure that I will soon hit an inflection point where I start to become more nervous than excited, but it doesn’t matter. As each day goes by, it means that I am one day closer to being cancer-free!