First Chemo

Well I'm getting released out of the hospital today! I'm pretty excited considering being trapped in a room all day for the last 3 days. Also, my mom and brother are flying out here to stay with me for awhile...I'm really happy. Having my family here is going to put me in really high spirits and help me to fight this thing off for good.

I got my first chemo treatment yesterday and it wasn't that bad but then again they don't have my on the extreme types of chemo. I start my other one in 2 weeks. We will have to see how that one goes. I was really hot during the treatment and had severe cold sweats last night when I slept. It was the worst I've ever had. I woke up soaked like I had just jumped in a pool. I'm so happy my friend Kaarla had been at the hospital with me because she really helped me out while I was here even though I'm so stubborn when it comes to caring for myself:) Thanks Kaarla. True friends are the best! I'll just keep all of you updated because who knows how I'll feel as the chemo continues. My liver swelling is still constant but the hospital was great about having me on pain meds since I've been here and it feels sooooooooo much better. Especially today. I can walk around without being crippled, I can stand all the way up straight again, and I'm even breathing a bit better too. Hopefully they send me home with some pretty good stuff so this can continue. Also, haven't told my mom yet but we are going to go shopping while she's here. She's going to help me get some scarves and bandanas for my soon to be bald head and a bit of make-up too. It'll be a great and emotional experience for both of us. For those of you that don't know me my mother was diagnosed with a severe case of breast cancer 2 years ago. She went through chemo and lost all her hair. It's still growing back now but she's as beautiful as ever.

One last thing before I end today's post. I know a lot of you kind of know what happened leading up to this but I have new readers and some people are a bit confused by everything so I just wanted to clarify my history so everyone knows:)

This is my 3rd recurrence of Melanoma. I had skin Melanoma on my right leg 4 years ago. It wasn't under the skin yet so I was Stage 1 they just removed a hugh portion of skin and stitched me up. Then last year in Aug I found just a little skin colored lump under my skin on the same leg as before but it was up near my groin area. I had scans done and it was all located in that area(from what they said). I was considered Stage 3a. I went in for surgery and they did a lymph node dissection of my right leg. This consists of removing all your lymph nodes (I had 16) and tissue, they cut my Sartorius muscle off my hip, rerouted over my Femoral artery (there was no more protection for it once everything was gone) and other major veins (one they actually cut a piece out of because it was part of the tissue and no they don't replace it just stitch it up), and attached it to my inguinal ligament (which is the crease where you bend your leg). Pretty major surgery and I lost all sensations off the top of my leg down to my quad even still today. Started rehab and transfered to Cali to finished adjuvant therapy (what you get to try and prevent cancer from coming back) at UCLA. I was enrolled in a trial there and had to get updated scans because they need them to be with in 30 days for it. I my last set in Sep and it was now Nov. UCLA gave me the results of these scans, multiple lesions in the liver and lung with the biggest being 2.8 cm. So they could no longer enroll me because I was not considered disease free anymore. They enrolled me into another trial, that was the one I just got taken off of and now here I am today with chemo. I really hope this clears it all up for everyone. I will be still be posting my links of learning when I don't have so much to post:) Stay tuned and have a happy Thursday. Go eat a really big ice cream today for me!