First chemo

Chemo....another word that strikes fear in the heart of a cancer patient. You hear horror stories of how awful it was, how sick they got etc etc. But they always say every patient reacts differently. You know what? Its true. Thanks to some miracle anti-nausea medication, Barry had virtually no reaction whatsover. There is a new "rock-star" of anti-emetics called Emend that totally works. The only response Barry had was his blood pressure dropped rather alarmingly. His blood pressure is always on the low side, but after the DTIC it dropped to about 59 over 45....not good. So they hydrated the beejeebers out of him for the next 2 hours and watched him pretty carefully. When his blood pressure went to 92/54 they let him go. We got to St. Mary's at about 9:30 (half hour later than we planned due to getting completely lost in the city) and were there until 4:45pm. Looooong day. I had warm blankets and that "bib" I used during his interferon for warmth, barf bags....you name it, I had it in the car, trying to prepare for any sort of reaction. But he did great. He is losing his hair, little by little....this was before the chemo. late reaction from the interferon? maybe. Stress? maybe. He looks thin and pale, but his sense of humor and his will to live is still intact. We were watching "Catch Me if you Can"....with Leo DiCaprio and in the beginning of the movie, there is a little story. It goes like this: Two mice fell into a bowl of cream. The first mouse drowned. The second mouse paddled and paddled and didn't stop until he turned that cream into butter and walked out. Barry said, " I guess I can get some wisdom out of that." Yes you can. Barry is gonna be that mouse who paddles and paddles until he finds a way out of this. Keep paddling Barry. You're my hero.