Week 1

Week one you should already know about.  I had what was supposed to be a 2.5 hr chemo treatment on Tuesday July 10.  I took 5 hours.  OK, the treatment actually took 3.5 hours, it took 1.5 hours of waiting for some one to put an IV in me at the beginning of the session first.  And actually it took 1.5 hours of waiting for someone competent on the nursing staff to get an IV in me.  I went through 3 nurses before they had the IV in.  It's hospital policy when setting an IV that if you can't get one in after 2 tries, another nurse must then try.  And so yes I did say it took 3 nurses.  The first 2 were very nice people except they cant stick a vein.  Granted, I have always had difficult veins to draw blood of set an IV.  But really, 5 attempts at a hospital seems a bit extreme.  The final nurse who actually got it in my arm was an older nurse in her 40's.  She called herself Nurse Ratchet although her name tag said her name was Nancy.  She was cracking me up.  Totally bitched about how all the young newbie nurse can't use a needle, how schools and hospital facilities don't spend enough time (= $$$$) on training nurses to be better with needles,  and in her days as a newbie they spent hours and hours poking oranges, volunteers, and themselves and were tested on it- it was part of the job description.  Blah Blah Blah, she was on a roll but she was right.  It took her about 30 seconds once she had all the pieces parts she needed to set the IV.  In it went, and out the door she went as soon as it was in, back to what ever her regular nursing gig was for the day and left the clean up to one of the newbies.
Finally got taken back to an "Infusion" room; a little 1/4 size hospital room set up for doing infusions.
They have about 50 rooms for infusions, most the size of my space but there were also larger room for those who needed Chemo Infusion for 8+ hours.  I guess my 2.5 hour infusion was nothing in the big scheme of things.  It was very uneventful and I left for the hotel by 5pm not feeling bad at all.  Had the next day off and laid low waiting for Chemo reactions.  There were none.  I was so disappointed.
Thursday the 12th I had all my Tomo simulation to take care of.  Jumped into the shower and noticed that I was washing a lot more hair off my body than usual.  By the time I got out, I swear there was a months worth of hair that had come out/off my body.  Guess I was having a little chemo reaction.
Went and did the Tomo Simulation, got my "mask", I was all set to go and start.  Except for the fact that it took a week for the computer to calculate it's targeting positions.  I had to wait until the next week to check the simulation and mask fitting, have another uneventful Chemo treatment on Tuesday,  and we would start full treatment bright and early in the morning on Monday, July 23.
Oh, and did I mention that I was loosing my hair in an exponentially fast fashion over my whole upper half of my body.  Great!