Nathan got back from his last 2 days of chemo with bells on his toes and doing great. Unfortunately, as with the last time he had that pair of drugs 30 or so hours later he was ill with typical post-chemo symptoms. And as unfortunately we weren’t prepared. Hospital hadn’t given us anti-nausia drugs, we didn’t have gaitoraid or gingerale. With me on the phone to Children’s our favorite medical fellow on the other end (Dr. Jeff will be such a good doctor, is already a good doctor) Ken off to work with the pharmacy on a rapid turnaround on filling the prescription all was better 6 or so hours after it started. Thank you Olivia for coming and sitting at home with Nathan to be sure this is over this AM while Ken and I are off to my first chemo.
Ken, Colleen and I attended Chemo learning yesterday also. Good news, I can continue to eat my favorite cheeses. And as I expected sushi and Lox are off my plate for the next 4.5 months. Oh and almost certainly I’ll loose my hair. More challenging news is that there are going to be lots of other shots and visits to the doctor in Virginia beyond the ones we knew about. There will be 8 21 day rounds of treatment. Healing is going to be a full time job for a while. Also very good news is that the facility has lovely people in it and our main contact so far is a male African American nurse practitioner with whom we engaged in a deep and important conversation about Unitarian Universalism, spirit, racism and the state of Virginia. All of that came about as I was angling to tell him that I wanted imagery of light, and love and grace to dominate my chemo, not fighting and war and violence. He got it.
And now the prayer as I go into my first chemo: God of grace and light, please help me be strong enough to tolerate the side effects of these treatments targeted to remove the cancer cells from my body, and let the drugs be strong enough to do their work. Love is powerful, more powerful than we usually believe. Let the love of this group and its prayers and well wishes strengthen all us Fraser Iobsts to heal.