Week 1
I woke up this morning and decided to head into work as a surprise to my branch (the biweekly branch meeting was today). After I dropped my daughter at her pre-k school, I headed into work. Interestingly, I couldn’t have planned it any better if I tried; the branch meeting starts at 9a and I got to work at 9:05a. Thus, once everyone was settled down and Joyce, our deputy branch chief, had started updating the branch, I walked in. Everyone was (or at least seemed) shocked; regardless, I was warmly received and that was nice.
After a relatively brief visit, I headed to the hospital. Strangely, I was more nervous about this visit than I would have expected. I am not sure why I would be stressed; there was no reason to presume I would get disappointing information about my CT scan (it came back normal) and there was no reason to think I would have an adverse reaction to the chemo (the doctor said that I should tolerate Gemcitabine about as well as I did 5FU. Despite my apprehension, my time in the chemo bay was actually not as long as I expected (though, I had forgotten how much I dislike having my port accessed). Sure, it’s only a little stick and a sting, but damn it smarts.
After all is said and done, though, I do not expect I’ll be back to work before Sept. 29th (the day my medical leave ends). As I sit here, I am yawning uncontrollably and my incision is quite sore. I’m not willing to say that I did too much today, but I’m willing to acknowledge that I may need to take it easy tomorrow to recover. 
Merle