Day 1 of NotChemo and Radiation

Today was the first day of NotChemo and radiation. (The drug therapy he is getting, Erbitux, the monoclonal antibody, is more correctly referred to as "biotherapy" rather than "chemotheapy," so we are calling it NotChemo.)

It started with depressed dog. Wags knows when we're leaving her, and she was not happy this morning.

Then we made our way to the hospital, and into the treatment room. It's a big room with a bunch of chairs for all the chemo/NotChemo patients. Today it was about half full. Here is Vic with his nurse, the beautiful and charming Holly:

Here is the sweet and lovely Holly showing Vic his meds.

Here is Vic hooked up to his meds:

(Cara, note the bag he chose to be his NotChemo bag!)


And here's Vic the joker:

Here is a closer look at his Erbitux bag—the nurse who prepared the concoction puts stickers on the bag. Stars indicate a first-time patient. They really want you to feel cared for here. :-)

During NotChemo, he tried to FaceTime with Bryan ...

... but the connection is not that strong in this wing of the hospital, so that didn't work too well.

He made it through the NotChemo with flying colors, and we got to go home to Waggy for lunch. She was very excited to see us, and after lunch, she ran to get the ball—because that's what we do after lunch. This is how she reacted when she realized not only that we weren't going to play ball but also that we were going to leave her again:

So, off to radiation. When we arrived, the Biotronix people were there to check his defibrillator. The radiation shouldn't bother the defibrillator, but they just want to make sure. They also had a crash cart and a special nurse who monitors heart rhythms. They really don't want Vic to crash here! And (whew!) he didn't.

The radiation techs said he did a great job. Vic said, "Apparently they didn't hear the weeping." I actually did hear something from the room I was waiting in, kind of a cross between a shriek and a wail and a moan—like the mandrakes in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets—and I was worried it was Vic. But when he came in a few minutes later, he said, "Well, we killed at least one of the little buggers today," and that's when I realized the sound was a cancer cell running and screaming from the building! Take that, cancer!

Two more radiation treatments this week—then we're off to the final Harry Potter movie on Sunday!

I'm pretty proud of my man today. It's easy for me to be strong and positive—I'm not the one with cancer growing in my throat and poison running through my veins and radiation searing the inside of my mouth. But he never wavered today. He never stopped smiling, never stopped cracking jokes, never whined. Sure do love that guy.