One Chemo Down...and a Mohawk!

I had my first chemotherapy treatment on 12/12.  The port was placed the day prior and that whole procedure wasn't too bad.  I just love being in the drug-induced twilight phase!  

Here's a picture of the port.  The bandage is covering up the incision and you can see the lump right under the bruising.  Basically, it's a catheter they put inside my vein so they don't have to stick me with an IV every time I go.  

My Oncotytpe Dx score came back on the low end of the high recurrence rate (score was 32).  So I have a 21% chance of distance recurrence without chemotherapy...so Dr. Saleh stuck with my original treatment plan and didn't make any changes.  Hopefully the chemo does it's job and my horrible little cancer cells stop multiplying and landing in other locations!

Here's the port in action.  All the nurse did was prick my skin (directly on the lump) with the needle and hooked me up to all the meds!  

The whole process took about 4 hours, they go a little slower on the first  infusion since they need to monitor any potential reactions.  Lucky for me, I'm pretty chill and didn't have any problems at all.  I had a Benadryl-induced nap for an hour or so, Tzaddi and I watched about 3 episodes of Friday Night Lights and he got me Subway for lunch.  I was pretty tired the first few days but VERY cranky (due to the amount of steroids they give).  The side effects for me started on Day 4 (12/15).  I had massive body pain due to the Neulasta shot and major headaches that lasted for 4 days.  It was rough, but I got through it - it's very doable!

I was supposed to go back to work on 12/17 but due to the chemo SEs I reported back on 12/19.  It was so nice to be back at work and see everyone!  It took exactly 1 week to feel well enough for work, and on Day 9 I felt completely normal!

Let the shedding begin!  

The nurses told me Day 17 and Day 18 would be hair-loss days.  They were pretty much right on.  My hair started shedding a little on Day 13...and got progressively worse as the days went by.  But I'm a picker - and every day I would sit with my head over the sink and see how much I could comb out with my fingers.  This was Day 16:

Once I realized the shedding was leading to bald spots, I had Tzaddi shave my head.  You can see that my hair has really thinned out a lot...and the back had actual patches of missing hair, depending on the way the wind blew! 

I wasn't quite ready to take my hair all the way down, so we went with a mohawk!  Well, I don't put any goop in it (since the goop just sticks to my hair then hand) so it's more of a Flop Hawk.  I figure I'll be lucky if I get a week wearing this style!

I must say, after rocking this look for a few days I really like it!  I feel a bit like a poser at times, but it's all good.  As long as cancer thinks I'm a bad ass, I'm cool with that!