Believe it or not, here comes the start of my four-month dance with chemo. I report for duty on Thursday, August 27, with Sean and my sweet mom, who's as glad she gets to be here with me as I'll be to have her. I got my handy dandy chest port inserted under my right collar bone today. This little subcutaneous device will make it easy breezy (or at least easier breezier) to get my intravenous chemo drugs into me. I'll get my first four treatments every two weeks: a cocktail of "red devil" adriamycin and cytoxan, or A/C for short. For the second half of chemo, I'll get a different drug called taxol — most likely once a week for eight weeks. (At one point, my oncologist said I could choose between eight weekly treatments or four biweekly ones, but I later learned that studies show the weekly treatments are more effective.)

Now for a random mishmash of other updates, in no particular order, as I'm writing through a wee bit of post chest port sedation fog: My recovery from surgery is going fine, aside from a ping pong ball-shaped bulge of fluid that keeps filling up at one end of my mastectomy scar. It's nothing out of the ordinary — just fluid my body's producing as the tissue in around around my ex-breast heals. For two weeks after surgery, I had external drains that were catching all that fluid. By the time the second one came out a week ago, it was still producing quite a bit of fluid. So now my body's just taking its sweet time figuring out how to absorb that stuff itself. I've had to get it drained twice and have two more appointments to get more fluid drained if needed. It hasn't been too painful (except for when it gets so swollen, I can't comfortably sleep. The biggest drag has been that it's robbed me of some work time — annoying and a little dispiriting as I try to bounce back and resume a normal-ish, even if scaled-back work schedule. After meeting with one physical therapist who didn't give me much (or even a little) confidence that we'd work well together, I found another who will be great. I've developed some "chording" or "what they call axillary web syndrome" under my left arm. It's limiting my movement as I recover and may or may not put me at higher risk for lymphedema. Glad to have it on the PT radar, and know that I should keep doing what I'm doing by doing gentle exercises to regain my normal range of motion — a process that'll likely take 6-8 weeks. I went for my first post-surgery swim the other day — after taking way more weeks off than I wanted to because of cancer stuff. I'll have to take another couple weeks off as my chest port incision heals. But after that, I'm hopeful I can get back to my favorite form of exercise, with one of favorite friends. Mary Murray not only swims with me most every Wednesday morning, but came to my rescue (well past her usual bedtime, I'm pretty sure) when an unfortunate confluence of work/life/cancer/parenting stresses reduced me to an almost hyperventilating ball of tears the other night. Mary's stepping up to take on a hugely helpful task for the month of September, when Sean will be trying back to back cases (i.e., high-stress 12-hour days) right as I'm getting used to this whole chemo thing. (Thanks, sucky timing!) She's going to mobilize a crew of local helpers so that our kids can get to school in the morning and get fed, bathed, and tucked in for the night if/when Sean has to work stupid hours and I'm too wiped out to deal with mama duties. So grateful for friends who feel more like family at a time like this. Speaking of mobilization logistics, we've taken playdates off my CaringBridge planner because we realize those are easier to organize closer to game time. If you'd like to be on our list of potential playdate hosts, email Sean at spgillespie@gmail.com with your email address, cell number and the best way to reach you. There are plenty of available slots for meal deliveries, errand runs, farmers market picnics/bedtime help available in September and October — and a new task we've just added that out-of-town folks can do: gift us a meal through Munchery. Lastly ... I send HUGE thanks to the many folks who have sent us gift cards to our neighborhood grocery store, Munchery and other eateries, hosted the kids for playdates and sleepovers, schlepped them to and from summer camp, helped us with yardwork and housework, and so much more. OK, folks. Peace out. Until next time ...