The NEW chemo plan....

I had an appoinment with Dr. Bernstein at 13:00 at the Cancer Agency.  Auntie and I went and I told Phil to go to work as I want him to be with me on chemo day and he can't really miss anymore time at work. 
I got put in the clinic room and was sitting talking with Auntie when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Bonnie walking by!!  It was so nice to see her.  She looked beautiful and radiant and we had a brief pow-wow before Dr. Bernstein arrived to see me.  For those of you who don't know, Bonnie is my "Guardian Messenger" you can read my blog post about her.
Here's how the appointment went......Dr. Bernstein had thought she had come to the conclusion of what she wanted to do and then on Friday she did some more investigating and found an alternative plan to her original solution. 
The idea is that we want to keep me on the closest "cocktail" of chemotherapy as the original one I started with.  This plan she found on Friday was going to be the closest we could get to the original.  It was going to consist of three drugs Herceptin, Cyclophosphamide and Abraxane.  So the drug that has changed is the last one called Abraxane.  After some discussion and a Q&A period I decided I was going to drop the cyclophosphamide piece as this is the drug that made me so terribly ill last cycle and the increase of efficacy from using the cyclophophamide is really low, under 2% benefit, and really there is no real evidence to prove that it would increase at all anyway.
I will go on Wednesday 0900 for the next round. I am nervous about it, she originally wanted to run the dose of the Abraxane broken up over 3 doses doing one dose a week.  When I decided to drop the cyclophosphamide she said that she could run the full dose every three weeks with Herceptin and avoid having me come in every week.  It is a big dose of drug and it comes with it's own bag of tricks for side effects!  Some of them are muscle and joint pain, extreme fatigue, hair loss (which I already have!) and a variety of other lovely things. The reason this Abraxane is supposed to be a better choice is because it is not mixed with any solutions which is what they think I am allergic to.
SO, to sum this all up, I am having two more rounds of this new "cocktail" and we will see how this first dose goes.  I am really nervous, I'll make sure I put on my big girl underwear and have my ladyballs hanging low on Wednesday.
I have received so many encouraging and thoughtful messages and I thank you for every single one of them!
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