Herceptin

So here's the short of it,
Thoughts about Herceptin

And here's the long

I felt well enough to go to work today.  I did go in late morning and just went to W. 40th street, but I stayed and got in a good half day work.  I don't have a lot of stamina to do much besides e-mail, correspondence, and checking on work in progress, but I did get quite a bit done.  I'm planning to go to work again tomorrow for awhile.  I have a Herceptin infusion tomorrow afternoon, so I'll need to get to work in time to get my time in and be able to leave for the treatment.  I'll have to get on a regular schedule for this, since it will be once a week for the rest of the year.  Tomorrow we'll talk about what time of day is best for them.  I'm thinking that for the time I'm doing radiation, I want to line it up with the time those appointments are, and then after that I can think about having it first thing in the AM, at lunch or right at the end of the day.  I hope one of those times works for them!

Alan and I went down and had dinner with Mom and Russ this evening.  She made Salmon cakes and her famous fried corn and some asparagus.  I made some roasted beets and took some cottage cheese.  It was a nice supper and we broke open a bag of Halloween candy for dessert! I'll be glad when I'm feeling well enough to have her up here for a dinner I've fixed! 

I'm feeling so much better this treatment cycle than I've felt for any of the previous ones.  A part of me keeps thinking that when I get to the office tomorrow, they'll tell me they forgot one of the medicines, or that they gave me too low a dose.   My feet are really in pretty bad shape now.  It's hard to walk around much because I don't have a good sense of where my feet are on the floor, and they hurt, and they feel numb.  I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it's still true.  I think they've gotten worse every day since about Saturday.  Tomorrow I'll get some advise about what to do.  So far my hands and fingers are not so severe.  I do have some noticeable neuropathy in my fingers and the palms of my hands though.  Tonight without thinking I flicked at a really tiny little scab on my arm and it absolutely would not quit bleeding.  So I'm going to guess that when they run my labs tomorrow, my platelets will be low again.  Maybe they can just let them get back to normal on their own since I won't be having anymore chemo drugs.

I was trying to talk tonight about the difference between Chemo and Herceptin.  The Herceptin shouldn't cause all the horrible side effects that Chemo has been giving me.  Now I'm not assuming that it will be a walk in the park, and I'll be sure to keep the blog updated about how it is all going.  But as I understand it, the Herceptin is specifically made to seek out cells which produce too much HER2 protein.  It somehow turns off the signals which make these cells do that.  So, I'm up for wearing a button up shirt once a week and going down to the infusion room and getting my port hooked up for a dose of Herceptin!  I am getting to like all those folks so much anyway it will be great to keep seeing them for awhile.