Chemo: Day 1

From Shelley: October 4 @ 7:26 AM

Yesterday was day 1 so today is day 2 of her treatment... yesterday was a rough, day with many low points, but there were some high points as well so we are thankful for those. We started the day with several blood draws (where they are drawing the blood from her arm bend, forearm or hand.) Those got more and more difficult with each stick since she started to understand the pain more and more each time. Before each blood draw we felt overwhelmed and just sick and sad for her, but after it was over we would be back up the roller coaster and start to feel better. That's one way we have been able to explain this is it has just been a roller coaster ride. There's times where we want to take all these tubes out of her and just forget it all and take her home, but then 5 minutes later we feel encouraged that we got past something hard and we say "we can do this". God has been carrying us (that's the only way to describe it) through this. If I would have put myself in this situation before it was actually happening I would think that we would be like fish with no water flopping on the ground weeping hysterically, but although we have had many low points, we have had times of laughter, smiles and enjoying just loving her and being with her and together. Jacob was able to come here for the first time last night and that was refreshing for all of us. We explained everything to him (we have had help in how to talk to him about this from some people here) and it went good.

From Andy:
When I talked to Shelley she said that this first round of Chemo would take 9 days. Then the rest would be able to be done on an out-patient basis. They were excited about that because they thought that would mean that they could go home in the next week. It will be a long process from there though. She said that it would probably be 2-2 1/2 years before they could say that Abbey has "beaten" this.