Guess who's got a date?

...date to start chemo, that is! I went in for my follow up visit to Dr Thies, my local surgeon that performed the colectomy.  He said my wound was healing very well.  So I can do yoga now (yay!), I can take a bath (yay yay!), and I can start chemo the week of 10/15.

I emailed the Nurse Practitioner for Dr Zafar at Duke that we met on Monday, really nice, informative woman named Leigh, and told her all the info:

• I want to have all treatments at Duke
• I want to go with the oral 5FU instead of the IV
• I want to get my port placed by my local surgeon, instead of having to go back to Duke
• And I'm able to start chemo the week of 10/15

I also asked for a recommendation of what day of the week to start chemo.  Unfortunately there are no clinics on Friday or Saturday, and Leigh and Dr Zafar are in clinics Monday mornings and all day Thursdays, although Leigh is in clinics Monday - Thursday, so I can do it without Dr Zafar.  She recommended Thursdays since patients that are working like to have the weekend close to rest.  And she mentioned that we can always switch the days up later if something else becomes more convenient. So I'm leaning toward Thursdays.  

She also said it would be great to have my port "installed" locally.  A port is a small catheter to my heart that will be placed under the skin by my collar bone.  This will allow easy administration of all drugs, fluids, etc, and allow them to take blood from me easily.  So no more IVs, and getting stuck with needles - yay!  Dr Thies informed me that I'm gonna have to clean/flush this sucker - ewwww! And that there is a risk of inflection if you don't clean it well and often.  So having a local doc around to assist with that makes me happy :)

I also visited a homeopath naturopath yesterday, so I'll tell you more about him later.  But I've got to start getting ready for work.  Yes, I'm back in the office!  I went back on Wednesday and arrived to a decorated cubical.  My teammates rock!  Here are a couple pics :)