Quick Review of Today's Chemo Class (by Melissa Baker)

This afternoon Christy, Dave, and Brent went to the Chemo Class.  They were there for about 2 hours and came away feeling like Christy was in incredible hands.  She's going to be very well taken care of through these chemo rounds.

Some basics of the class:

• Their goal for Christy is that she is just as active, if not more so, after her cancer treatment is finished as she is now.  She should work hard to be active throughout the next year of treatments too--30 minutes of exercise per day!
• Christy needs to eat well and drink lots of liquids.  Her diet should be high protein, low fat, and low on refined carbohydrates; basically all the meat, fruits and veggies she could possibly want.  She will need to eat small meals about 6 times per day.  This will help fight any nausea she may experience as well as temper the increased acidity of her stomach that chemo will cause.
• Christy is not allowed to get nauseated.  :)  They have already given her some meds to take for tomorrow's treatment.  If she vomits more than once in 24 hours, she's supposed to call their emergency number so they can get right on top of it.  Since she struggled with nausea during pregnancy, she faces some increased risk of nausea during chemo, but they don't want her to have to suffer that misery, so bring on the anti-nausea measures full force.
• She needs to avoid spicy foods in general (take note if you're bringing dinners...)
• Christy should not lose any weight.  It will be a difficult thing to manage, but she'll need to keep her weight to keep up the treatment cycles.  This means eating even when she doesn't feel like it and really fighting the nausea.  Any weight loss will be indicated in her blood tests, which she'll be getting lots of...
• Odors will be stronger to Christy than to the rest of us.  And her taste will be altered during the course of treatment.  Not fun side effects, and ones that the rest of us can be sensitive toward.
• Christy must be diligent about avoiding illness.  If you're sick, she can't see you.  If you have sick people at your house, she can't come there.  The riskiest time of infection will be about 10-14 days after each treatment, when her white blood cell count will be the lowest.  But that will be tough for the rest of us to keep track of, so let's just all keep our germs to ourselves--no sharing!

Tomorrow morning is the first Chemo treatment.  Dave and Brent will go with Christy and stay with her throughout the process.  The most painful part will be when they have to hold and push the port in order to administer the drugs--it's still extremely sensitive from the placement surgery earlier this week. 

Brent mentioned Christy didn't seem overly nervous, and that feels like some good news.  Please keep the prayers on her behalf coming! 

And please check out the planner tab--there are still a number of slots available for errands and help next week...