Below is the blog post I wrote about my first chemo session in May 2018.
1st chemo session and cold caps
Today was the first day of chemo. I was pleasantly surprised- it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t really have any reactions, except some flushing. We were at the cancer center from 8:15am til about 4pm so it was a long day. It went by pretty quickly though. Andy was with me the whole time and was super amazing! My mom came for a couple hours and Sandi came too. It meant a lot to me that they were there. The first 2 meds, perjeta and herceptin, took a total of 3 1/2 hours. It should be infused a little more quickly on future sessions. The last 2 meds, taxotere and carboplatin, were the harsher stuff. They took a total of 1 1/2 hours.
These last 2 meds are the ones that cause hair loss so we started the cold caps about an hour before the taxotere started. I had to keep one on until 3 hours after the carboplatin was done. It has to be changed out every 30 minutes so it keeps the scalp cool. They are about -32 degrees when they are put on (yes, I said negative 32). There are several cold cap brands but I chose to use Polar Cold Caps. We had to get 80 pounds of dry ice for today to keep them super cold. I’m tired tonight but I’m not sure it’s any more than usual. It was a great first day of this attack on my breast cancer!
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