Four days after Vascular Surgry let the party begin…Nah Not really!

I would be scheduled to get 4 rounds of Carboplatin and Taxotere combined with one year of HERCEPTIN. Yes I said ONE YEAR of infusions with Herceptin.  Herceptin is a life saving mon-clonial antibody that targeted my aggressive form of HER2+ breast cancer.  My cancer cells were replicating fast and furiously and they needed to be STOPPED! Only I would need a year of this infusion to kill every last one of them!!! I would get infusions of the Carboplatin and Taxotere once every 3 weeks but I would have Herceptin every week  for a year. Have I said I HATE CANCER!!! Grrrrr!

I was blessed to get the most amazing Oncology Nurse ever created Shamichael!!  From my first day of Chemotherapy orientation, no seriously you have to complete it before you begin .Good times right? Unfortunately, I hate to admit it but  I had a horrible attitude that afternoon during my orientation  but Shay was not phased in the slightest. She was positive, encouraging, hopeful and oh so happy. It was hard to resist her positivity. She is truly an angel sent here on earth to help guide me and my family through the hardest and most frightening time of my life.So  with a better attitude than when I arrived we parted ways only to see her again in a few days to begin this portion of the journey.

I was so incredibly nerveous this day.. what would it  feel like? how would it make me feel? how sick was this going to make me?would the cold caps save my hair and MOST importantly would it WORK????? WOULD THIS KILL MY CANCER and not me in the process??

the first day of chemo my crew is ready

Penguin Cold Caps

The adventures of the cold caps: Please let them work and pretty please help me not lose my hair from CHEMO!!! PLEASE GOD PLEASE!!

I invested several of  thousand of  dollars  not covered by my insurance to save my follicles. I had so little that I was able to control in this disease I thought I might manage a sliver of control by using this technique which had proven to save your hair during chemo.  Losing my hair was going to be hard and i was going to try with every ounce of my being to prevent that from happening. I knew there was a chance that it would not work but  I was definitely going to try…

Heres how it works:Penguin Cold Caps

This innovative  approach reduces chemotherapy induced  hair loss by cooling the hair capillaries and reducing the metabolic rate of the hair follicles to a hibernated state, preventing the absorption of chemotherapeutic drugs into the hair bulbs of the scalp.

Penguin Cold Caps: The “A” team. MOM DAD AND THOMAS

Life saving Poison and a literal brain freeze!BURRR

Thomas keeping meticulous tabs of the temperature of the cold caps.saving the follicles