Cycle 6, Day 1

It rained on the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the physicians and the patients, the professors and the students...all alike...today at Vanderbilt. I took the above "umbrella and other ways to keep dry" study, while Woody was waiting for and having his Zometa treatment. These were all taken through the window of the room that we were in. If you look really closely you can find Woody in one of the pictures (hint: it's his reflection in the window behind one of the umbrella carriers).

We started so early that we beat the rain to Nashville. We didn't realize that it had started raining till we were called back to the waiting room outside Dr. Sosman's patient rooms. Once again, things got going very quickly once we got there. Shortly after registering, Woody was called to have his labs done. And, it wasn't too long till we got called back to the "inner waiting room" and we didn't have to wait too long in that area till we were taken to one of Dr. Sosman's examining rooms. We did wait a while in there...but in that wait...Woody's drug study nurse talked to us and told us she would be back...she came back and said that his labs looked like things would proceed for the next cycle...then a doctor in training came in and asked Woody questions and checked him out...and...finally it was Dr. Sosman's turn. At some point during that time, I handed the nurse the pill bottles from the 5th cycle and the diary card and she handed me the new card for the 6th cycle. Once Dr. Sosman had left, we were told to go on to the Infusion lab to get registered to have his Zometa treatment. We waited a while for a room there, but really not all that long. And, this time the Zometa got brought in quite quickly from the pharmacy. Zometa is a short infusion time (around 15 min.). When it was finished, I called the research nurse on the cell phone to find out where she wanted us to go to wait for the drug study drugs. She said that she was on the way to pick them up and to wait right where we were. Woody finished taking his 9 pills at 12:15pm and we headed out to claim our car. Now, that is where the wait was really long...made to feel especially long as it was damp and cold. The car was finally brought to us and we were on our way out of the Vanderbilt area by 1pm.

We stopped at Melany's to pick up a book that she had checked out for Woody to read from her school library...a Newberry Honor book that Woody had been wanting to read that our public library doesn't have. We saw their pretty Christmas decorations and ate some yummy strawberry cheesecake. And, then it was "on the road again." I was worn out and slept a good part of the way home. It did start raining on us again on the way home. We drove back into our driveway a little after 4pm...so we had a ten + hour day on the road and at Vanderbilt. Woody's nurse suggested that he wait till 10:15pm to take his evening chemo drug study pills...I know that it will be hard for him to stay awake till then!