It may have been postponed by a day, but my chemo Amazons at school rallied. Carla came to pick Mom and I up around 8:15. She couldn’t stay the whole time because of classes, but the fact that she came and people were willing to cover her first class means the world to me and to Mom. In fact, Mom bought Carla finger puppets in the states along with a present to say thank you for all she has done for me. In the exchange of the gifts, Mom burst into tears which made Carla cry. Not going to lie, I shut that shit down real quick. I simply cannot start a chemo in tears. If I do that, I will be crying for days. As positive as I am throughout this whole experience, the whole thing still sucks big monkey balls. And I am still very much aware that I have cancer at 31 and have to go through 12 rounds of chemo that makes me feel like absolute crap every other week. So just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no crying in chemotherapy!

Chemo number 8 was just like seven, easy to administer and exhausting afterwards. With the port, the process really goes rather quickly. They had to do a blood test first, since my cells were so low before. However, they seemed to pop right back up with the Neupogen shot. The nurses gowned up, put the surgical cloth around the port, told me to take a breath, and in went the fish-hook needle. Again, I didn’t feel a thing. The blood draw was worse.

The Prep

Deep Breath

Process begins

While I got loopy, Mom and Carla played with the finger puppets. It was quite entertaining. Around 10:15 Carla had to make it back to class and the chemo started.

You better believe the jaws theme song was playing in the background.

Sapo Ruperto made a visit

Mom and I played around with my bald head. We decided to play the many faces of bald Kim. The chemo is so monotonous, that we have to find new ways to entertain ourselves.

Surprised baldy

Teacher baldy

old man baldy

Bookworm baldy

And then Carla sent us some entertainment from school. Apparently, the finger puppets just couldn’t stay in their little bag. They had to come out to play with our colleagues.

Mouse meets Sofia, my substitute

Two wise men

Sapo and Javi

Fish are friends, not food

With all of the entertainment and drugs in my system, I checked out for a bit. By the time the last of chemos is administrated, I am so tired. The loopy drugs don’t help. I just can’t stay awake anymore. Plus, I have found that if I sleep a bit through the last one, it all goes by really fast.

Sleepy time

Wakey time

Stretch

Only a little bit more

I had some lunch – a chicken sandwich and papas. Not sure what happened, if it was the food or the coffee I had had earlier, but my stomach was destroyed for the whole evening. I didn’t have nausea but the diarrhea was real! Even Dad’s magic pills were not working. So Mom made me a smoothie for dinner, which helped a bit. In fact, in terms of symptoms afterwards, this one was probably one of the hardest. I just didn’t feel right. My chest was killing me. It wasn’t a pain, but a pressure. It was like an elephant was sitting on my chest and I couldn’t take a full breath. I watched some Disney movies and tried to sleep, but I just couldn’t bring my body to right itself. We watched a few episodes of The Good Wife, Mommy rubbed my bald head, and then I was off to bed.

Another one down. Only four more to go. But they are getting more difficult to cope with afterwards. I’m more tired and weaker. And that quite frankly makes me angry. I just want them done. I’m over all of this. The four to five days of feeling crappy is a pain in the ass. But I just have to keep telling myself that there are only 55 days left – four treatments, two months. And only 16 of those 55 days will be crappy.