(written by Sunny)
When we last left Lindsie she had completed one session of radiation. She had also been told Tuesday morning by Dr. Bridges that she wouldn't receive chemo until after radiation had been completed. However, when Lindsie was taken down for her sim on Tuesday we had met briefly with Dr. Kuhn and she said that Lindsie would be started on the drug Herceptin the next day along with continuing her 10 sessions of radiation. We'll get into Lindsie's chemo regimen later, but Herceptin is one of three drugs she'll be receive during chemo. This was a little confusing.
Additionally, Herceptin is the drug that requires an echocardiogram before it can be started and nobody seemed to know if the echo had been ordered since she'd missed her appointment on Monday. So much had happened in a few short days and the plan was still evolving so rapidly I was worried that something, like the echocardiogram, was going to be missed. Plus, even with her drugs drastically reduced Lindsie was still not completely aware of what was happening all the time. Here's a little story to illustrate Lindsie's head space. When we met with Dr. Kuhn Tuesday morning Lindsie was laying on a stretcher dozing in and out of reality. When the doctor approached her Lindsie's eyes got really big and she smiled this huge smile and gushed, "You look so beautiful and you smell so good! And that's not just the Dilaudid talking!" Yeah, right! Yes, Dr. Kuhn is beautiful and I'm sure she smells like an English garden in full bloom because I'm pretty sure everything the woman does is perfect, but Lindsie's reaction was just a little over the top. And by a little I mean a lot. She also gushed over the nurse's amazing handwriting when she gave Lindsie a form to sign. Homegirl was definitely visiting a magical place none of the rest of us could see.
So, with Lindsie in Cloud Cuckoo Land I was worried that someone was going to make a mistake on her rapidly changing case and she wouldn't even know it. After we came back up from radiation I asked Lindsie's nurse about the echo, but she didn't see it ordered. They left a note for Dr. Bridges that he would see when he rounded the next morning and I planned to get to the hospital before the Herceptin infusion just to make sure things went as they should. Things felt a little chaotic, but it was kind of nice that Lindsie was only partially aware and therefore couldn't stress about it. But that didn't mean I couldn't.
When I walked in Wednesday (11th) morning Lindsie was having the echo right there in her hospital bed. That was a huge relief. Right after that she was taken down to radiation again. This time they brought up something called a hover bed to make transferring easier. It's not as exciting as it sounds. I was hoping for something they borrowed from the future, but it was really just an air mattress. They put it on the stretcher uninflated, Lindsie walked herself to the stretcher and laid down on it, and they wheeled her down to radiation. That's where the magic happened. Once she was ready to be moved to the radiation table they inflated the mattress and pulled her on that over to the table. It was a softer, gentler process than the backboard. Still painful, but a definite improvement. They deflated it during radiation, then reinflated it before moving her back to the stretcher. When we got her back to her room and she went to get on her own bed it started rolling away from her and she almost fell. Seriously? The guy who did the echo that morning had unlocked her bed to move it and had never locked it again. I was pretty sure at that point that if we ever wanted Lindsie to feel better we needed to get her out of that hospital, stat!
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