Bernadette

The chemo went well – first time I had no dramas whatsoever – no reaction, no nausea, nothing at all. The bad news is that one of the drugs has done some lung damage (a measurement called gas transfer which should be 100% has suddenly dropped to 54% when it is usually around 78% for me) - I will be having more lung tests as time goes on to determine if it is permanent or not - so consequently they have had to stop one of the 4 drugs. The good news is that between the 8^th treatment and the 9^th treatment (27^th July) I am going to have an MRI. If this shows the cancer has gone (Dr said there is a chance of this) then I will only require 4 more treatments taking me to Sept 14 (end of 36^th week) so perhaps delivery could either be delayed until 24^th Sept (I need at least 10 days post chemo to have a ceasar) or else they might let me go full term (10 Oct). I need to talk to Brenda (OB) about it today and Dr Taylor said it is only a maybe that the cancer would be all gone by the end of July. If not it is back to the original plan of delivery at week 34 (29 August) and chemo until the end of November but we are going to keep our fingers crossed.

We had an ultrasound this week and all went really, really well. Arielle has grown heaps and her size is within normal ranges (a little on the smaller side but still very normal). She was as strong as ever and gave the Dr some very hard kicks whilst doing the ultrasound and was active for the whole time (40 minutes) having very few rest pauses. The Dr said it was one of the most active babies she had seen at 24 weeks (don’t I know it - I get so many hard whacks it is not funny!! It is so reassuring though).

I am feeling nauseous for most of the time between treatments and very tired but these are side effects I just have to cope with on a daily basis - once chemo is over they are over. They do get me quite down and I apologise upfront if I dont reply to emails or phone messages or sound half dead on the phone as I am really feeling rather revolting lately!!! Having a very active 2 year old obviously adds to the equation! Tiernan is getting so excited about Arielle though - he even put aside a favourite playmat for Arielle the other day and rubbed cream on my tummy and commented it would make Arielle come out faster. He keeps talking about when Arielle finishes growing and comes out. He is going to be a great big brother - he is already so gentle and caring with me and has an absolute baby obsession!

So all in all life is going along as well as can be expected - everyone please keep your fingers crossed for the MRI at the end of July.

Well yet another week spent with most of my time at doctors at the Mater! There was some concern earlier in the week that the cancer may have grown as I was getting chest and abdomen pain. I had to have another MRI and thankfully the results were very good - not only has the cancer not spread it has actually shrunk again which was just wonderful news. The pain seems to have been more pregnancy related which was a relief (baby is moving up now and I am also getting Brxton Hicks contractions- neither of which are a concern).

This week’s chemo went well. I did have a reaction again  but this time only for about 40 minutes and I managed to not have the morphine injection (they had it ready to give me and I pleaded with them to just wait a little longer before doing it as it was starting to settle - those morphine injections are almost worse than the pain itself!!). I only stayed in hospital overnight and it was nice for once to have nothing go wrong. Back home now and hopefully I can manage the next two weeks with just my scheduled doctors visits and no more tests or hospital visits until the next round of chemo!