If you are ever unfortunate enough to have to endure extended chemotherapy, you and your family may find a strange word to describe the treatments: routine. How such a nightmarish procedure which, pre-diagnosis, was hardly ever mentioned in polite company, and then only in hushed voices, can become 'normal' part of a family's every day life is remarkable. But that is what has happened around the Hoggard house.
Starting with the initial rounds of chemo back in November, our kids would know when Jinni was going in for treatment and everyone would give her a wide latitude with their maternal interaction a couple of days before and after her treatments. They knew something was up.
Now, because they sleep in past the time when she is due at the Cancer Center every Thursday, they might wake up at the crack of 10, come down the stairs and call me on my cell to remind me of a parent's most important function - taxi driver. "Mom's not here and I need to go to the pool", or, "I've got football practice in 10 minutes and Mom won't answer her cell." My stock answer is, "It is Thursday. She's at chemo." "Oh... yeah", is the resigned response from the taxi-hailing child. "Well, can you come and get me?", they ask... knowing full well I am probably up on a ladder in Virginia fixing windows. "Sorry", I'll respond, "Get creative with the neighbors or take the bus, and next time put it on the calendar."
When they sometimes (rarely) complain that their mom is unavailable for something or other due to chemo appointments or the drug's malaise inducing side-effects, I have another stock answer for Jinni's temporary unavailability: "Well, It's better than the alternative."
That usually shuts them up and puts them back in a routine frame of mind.
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Tomorrow Jinni will have her sixth weekly infusion of Taxotere. This will be a red-letter day because it will mark the half-way point of this phase of her treatments. This will be followed by seven weeks of daily radiation.
She still has her hair (which has grown back in quite curly), but that seems to be falling out again which is a real pisser. She was hoping it might stay this time.
The biggest problem with this drug is its effect on her tastebuds - they are dead - and she does not like that one bit. Jinni says she can smell food's aroma and everything looks appetizing, but when she takes a bite - there is nothing there. She, like her Dad, loves food. With fresh vegetables coming in now, she is really missing the tastes of summer.
All in all, though, she is tolerating Taxotere very well. A little nausea, a little sleeplessness, a little of this, a little of that. You know... mostly routine stuff.
8:29:36 AM 
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