My nurse educator suggested that I keep a journal of my first chemo treatment and the days following.\u00a0 She explained that the effects of each treatment will most likely follow the same pattern.\u00a0 She also mentioned that treatments will take on a snowball effect.\u00a0 The side effects of each one will not lessen, as I would have though, but they will progressively get worse. I know it will be a long post, but I plan on keeping each day on one page and updating it.\u00a0 I doubt I’ll keep a journal for each treatment, but at least I’ll have the very first to compare.<\/p>\n
September 11<\/strong>– The eve of my first chemo treatment.\u00a0 Anxious. Ready to get started. At this point, I’m embarrassed to say I’m more worried about my hair than anything.\u00a0 I’ve tucked the girls into bed.\u00a0 Mel is dozing on the couch beside me and I’m watching a 9\/11 documentary on the History Channel.\u00a0 All day, I’ve felt surrounded.\u00a0 Surrounded by love, prayers, support. Today I feel so very loved.<\/p>\n We’ve been busy.\u00a0 This morning, Mel rushed out the door early to speak at at prayer breakfast at a local church, and the girls and I hurriedly dressed for church.\u00a0 As I got ready, the girls happened to turn on the television.\u00a0 A&E was showing a real-time documentary on the events of 9\/11.\u00a0 McCanless sat entranced. (It was as if she were witnessing the events exactly as they happened-I was instantly thrown back into my 6th grade Literature class at THA 10 years ago, before McCanless was even born.)\u00a0 I sat down with her and we talked about what happened that day.\u00a0 Even Mary Clare was curious as to why the “mean men wanted to knock down the ‘Kuge’ Castles.”\u00a0 Eventually, a simple “the devil made them do it” was enough for her.\u00a0 We missed Sunday school, but the conversations McCanless and I had surrounding the documentary were lessons that her little mind craved after watching the terrorist attacks.\u00a0 I know the battle I’m facing with cancer is indeed a challenge, but as we sat and watched thousands of people hurting, grieving, it made everything clear.\u00a0 Everyone suffers.\u00a0 Everyone aches.\u00a0 It’s what you do out of that pain and suffering that matters most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My nurse educator suggested that I keep a journal of my first chemo treatment and the days following.\u00a0 She explained that the effects of each treatment will most likely follow the same pattern.\u00a0 She also mentioned that treatments will take on a snowball effect.\u00a0 The side effects of each one will not lessen, as I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6653,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions\/6653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}