WOW!!! What a day!!!!

Treatment || Day One:

March 24, 2014

The day started before the crack of dawn, 4am wheels rolling!  We decided to spend one more night at home, in our bed, with our babies!  Hence, the übber early departure.  

But it was worth it!

Bye,Bye babies, we will miss you!!

The ride in was uneventful, which is the best case scenario on a road trip.

Houston morning traffic was, to put it mildly, Houston morning traffic.

We arrived well ahead of schedule and had time to stop at our new favorite breakfast spot, Dunkin' Donuts!!!

We got through a full schedule of doctor visits, labs, genetics counseling, and by the end of the day, were ready to start treatments.

The chemo was first at 4pm.  When we checked in at 3:30, we were told they were running an hour and a half to two hours behind.  GREAT!  We only had a 5 hour window until radiation at 9.  The treatment was anticipated to take 4.5 hours.

Sooooooo, we told the chemo people that we had another appointment and we told the radiation people about the late schedule.

Since the chemo place is open until 3am and the radiation place is open until 10pm, we took our restaruant-style pager with us to the radiation center because they said they could see us before the chemo pager went off.  The race was on!  You know we both love a challenge.

So wouldn't you know it, the pager started buzzing, lighting up, and beeping about 20 minutes after Bert went into the radiation machine (about 6:30).  The first visit unfortumately is the longest, about an hour-and-a-half.

Radiation treatment #1 was a success.  Albert said he didn't feel a thing.  It was cool seeing the gi-normous equipment.  The techs and nurses were super great!  And he had the energy to drive back to the main building and see about getting back in line at chemo.

It must have been around 7:30pm when he finally got all hooked up to the chemo machine.  That's when the nurse said that there were some pre-meds that would take 30 minutes before the 1st chemo drug started, then 4.5 hours later the 2nd chemo drug would start, and take about another 30 minutes.  All in all, we should be out by 1am.

We settled in, ate supper, watched movies, played on our electronic devices, and attempted to nap...rather unsuccessfully.

The meal is included in the treatment if you are there during a meal time.  VERY nice surprise.  Except we were too late for supper.  No problem, the 24/7 cafe has sandwiches, smoothies, baked goods, etc. and it hit the spot!  Those growling stomach muscles shut right up!!

We enjoyed our time, decided early on to just go-with-the-flow, and spend all our energy in the here and now.  To heck with schedules and regular sleep/eating patterns, we would rest/eat whenever there was time and concentrate on keeping smiles on our faces! (New parents can relate.)

We finally finished at about 1:30 am.  

Chemo treatment #1, also a success!  [B-O-O-M!! Confetti!!!]

Next, we tried to find a 24 hour grocery store so that we wouldn't have to wake in search of food.  Silly us, thinking we could find an all night store!  Pshahhhh!  as if!!  

An hour later, we were praising the very thoughtful Kroger people for keeping their store open for the crazies like us.  Small inconvenience that we had to do a self-checkout.  Maybe we would have gotten less if we knew that ahead of time!  

So 24 hours after we got up Monday morning, we were finally settling in for the night!  We couldn't decide if we were even sleepy, since we both felt too wired to sleep, despite our exhaustion.

I'm not sure I even made it a full minute later, but the next thing I knew, it was morning and Albert had already made us coffee.  I guess he crashed immediately as well.

Wow!  What a day!