Today is looking up and I am feeling better about the decision to move forward with the chemo. The infectious disease team met with me this morning and discussed research they did yesterday which revealed that it is not uncommon for candida fevers to last several months. Additionally, there was research stating that there was no reason to delay chemotherapy treatment with an active infection. I also asked my oncologist many questions including the pros and cons of delaying chemo to wait for the infection to clear. She felt that there was greater risk in delaying chemo. Should I delay chemo and even one cancer cell comes back, I have to start over and will no longer be a candidate for an autologous transplant, I would have to have a donor transplant. This is not what I want to do.

I know that there is risk involved with starting the chemo but the ID doctors helped calm a lot of those fears this morning and the oncologist emphasized that my immune system will really only be down for about 10 days and she felt confident that they can get me through that. I’m not making this decision lightly or simply because it’s what the doctors think is okay, I’m making this decision to start because I feel more confident that this will be okay. I was a little emotional yesterday. I want to move forward with my treatment. Yes, I’ll be nervous and yes, chemo sucks and yes, I won’t be surprised if some other lovely side effects show up. But mentally, when I start tomorrow, I’m going into it the same way I did day 1 – this is a journey and am focused on where I’ll be on the other side. This is just another hill to climb.

One more thing – thanks Heather for the great visit last night and thanks Melly for your sound advice, as always.