Remember that time we went out to eat a couple days before your CAT scan?

Denise 2/24/2016

Well, the third cycle is now officially behind us.  That of course doesn't mean there weren't any problems.  We thought we made it out of the woods with this one.  Made sure that she had plenty of fluids and kept up with her meds.  But the weeks where she has her Gencitabine and Taxotere are the hells weeks.  She held up pretty good at the start of the week, but Thursday she started feeling a pretty crummy.  By Saturday, she was feeling up to getting out of the house and go grocery shopping with me as well as a bite to eat.  So we headed into town and stopped for lunch at El Pappa's, (local Mexican restaurant).  We were enjoying the chips and salsa and it started to happen.  Right after our food arrived.  It came out of nowhere like a freight train.  I could tell something was going on because she just stopped eating and was looking weird.  I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she was feeling woosy.  Then she started having a panic attack.  I jumped out of my seat and moved the table out of the way.  The wait staff and owners rushed over ready to call 911, she told them no and then she just passed out, unresponsive for what seemed like an eternity, but was only probably 10 - 20 seconds.  The weird thing is how quickly she bounced back.  She immediately became responsive and started getting color.  One of the fun side effects of this whole journey is what it's doing to her blood pressure.  It keeps dropping out of nowhere.  And that's what happened at the restaurant and tack on the panic attack, well, let's just say it sucked.  Badly.  But with another visit to the cardiologist today, we all figured it out together that her constant low blood pressure is due to the increased blood pressure meds she's been on since she landed in the hospital and had the afib episode.  At least now the cardiologist is taking the approach that, to paraphrase, "he was treating something that happened once, hadn't happened again, then why continue to take such a high dose of medicine?"  So with that, he told her to cut back on what meds she is taking to the levels she was taking before things went wonky and we'll go from there.  Hopefully this will get her back on her feet.
Yesterday was a big day, the follow up CAT scan.  The original plan was to have three cycles of chemo then scan.  Yesterday was that scan.  We won't know the official word until we see the doctor next Monday, but, we did hear back today that there's nothing new.  Of course Nurse Practitioner "J" doesn't want or can give everything away over the phone, but Denise said she sounded positive in her voice, so we'll take it as "good news".  We know we have more chemo in front of us, at least 3 cycles, but hopefully this is the beginning of the end of it.  So at least we don't have to go through until next Monday thinking the worst.
With Doctor M's help though we should be able to get through this.