Kiri's first chemo treatment

The big day finally arrived. And I think I'll let Kiri's facebook status update speak for itself:

First day went really well! I got to sit in a nice, comfy bed for 2 hours, eat free yummy food, watch trashy daytime TV about crazy people, and play iPod games with Justin. It's like a mini-vacation, minus the IV of chemicals in my arm thing -- which is not that hard to ignore and made me feel nice and loopy after! Score. Chemo=pretty damn okay.

I hardly need to do anything in these emails at this point except act as transcriber.

I was hugely relieved to find out that she'd been randomized into the Taxol/Lapatinib arm of the clinical trial at Dana-Farber. Given the blood/brain barrier issue, I couldn't have asked for a better choice. When I read that up to 30-40% of women with HER2+ tumors suffer metastases to the brain within 5 years, my entire bloodstream froze.[ Edited to add: I was entirely wet on this and neglected to read the term "metastatic", as in "30-40% of women with metastatic HER2+ tumors suffer metastases to the brain within 5 years." Mea culpa! ] Fortunately this included my tongue and fingers so I was able to prevent myself from passing on the information to Kiri. It looks like, unlike Herceptin, Lapatinib crosses the b/b barrier, so that puts that little paranoia of mine to rest.

The other two branches of the trial are Taxol/ Herceptin Taxol/Herceptin/Lapatinib.  Maybe the third combination, with both antibodies, would have been ideal, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. As part of her  treatment, Kiri will get Herceptin after her surgery for a year anyway. I figured it was better to limit the side effects if one drug could do the job of two.  Also, it avoids the possibility of her heart ejection fraction being lowered. She scored pretty high on the MUGA test - 71% - but that  won't be so relevant now that she's taking the Lapatinib. Later on it will be useful as a baseline measurement.

So, things may actually calm down a bit now, as she is "on the conveyer belt." :-) I just spoke to her on the phone and she's feeling fine, perfectly normal, about to eat dinner. No nausea, no reaction to the Taxol or the Decadron that they gave her before the treatment. They gave her Benadryl as well, so I reminded her about her paradoxical reaction to Benadryl that I discovered when she was three and being treated for a bad ear infection. She stopped sleeping. Completely. On a hunch, after two nightmarish weeks, I finally pulled her off it, and  she slept for three days . So I told her that when she found herself wide awake at three a.m. tonight, playing with her blocks, she would know why.

For myself, I'll take that nice glass of Cabernet now, garçon, and please bring me the rest of the bottle while you're at it.