4 Months total time - 6 rounds of chemo total.
The four months or so that went by for all the chemos was just a time you have to get through. Jackie was up, Jackie was down. Good days. Bad days. Some chemos better than others. Most of the time she was tired, very tired. Chemo drains you (as if having cancer wasn't draining enough). The main source of the transport of oxygen and nutrients to your body is strained, stressed and damaged by the chemo. The normal plan for Jackie's chemo was to get it every 3 weeks. This worked for the most part, but on a couple of occasions Jackie's blood counts were lower than the doctor liked, so to avoid infection and blood clotting problems, they were delayed for a week. This was disappointing to Jackie, as she wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. But what can you do? Push, but pushing too hard with chemo lands you right in the hospital.
Remember how I said Jackie's doctor didn't have all that many patients? Well that worked out pretty well. For all except one chemo Jackie got to have it administered in a regular visiting office, which was very private and comfortable. On one occasion though, we had to go down to the conference room with a couple of other people who were getting chemo at the same time. This had its good points and bad points. On the one hand, there was another patient getting what you'd call " killer" chemo -- very strong chemo- and he looked bad. This relieved Jackie somewhat over what she could be going through. On the other hand, the lady there was sort of depressed about her condition, and that didn't do anything for anybody but depress them as well. I guess the old saying applies: If you don't have anything good to say don't say anything at all.
However, for the most part during the chemo time Jackie was very good at getting all of our lives pretty much back to normal. That is, remembering of course, that we could never be "normal" again. Jackie was pretty much doing the same sorts of things as she had before she found out she had cancer. It was not easy for her, but I saw an amazing wellspring of strength in Jackie and in others who have had to face severe adversity that is profound and miraculous. Add to this that our home remodeling project was STILL going on. It is quite disruptive to your life to live in a house undergoing remodeling, let alone doing it through surgery, radiation, a sprained ankle, and chemotherapy. Jackie was a great help, but in all honesty, most of the carpentry and electrical work was in my domain anyway.
What if you have a child? What about your family? We had a five year old daughter, and we held nothing back. Our daughter visited Mommy in the hospital. She went to radiation a couple of times. She even went to chemo and sat around with us. We included her in all aspects of Jackie's treatment. Of course she was five, so for the most part we didn't ask her opinion either. I don't know what she understood and didn't understand, but I knew that she knew it was life threatening. She said to me one night soon after we knew what was going on, "If Mommy dies can I wear my fancy dress to the funeral", and on another occasion she said " Daddy, if Mommy dies will you get another wife?". Beats me what the right answers were, but I did the best I could knowing that sometimes the strangest and most honest things can come out of kid's mouths. She was also scared and at times clingy. I was scared too, but at thirty-five it's hard to get clingy.
I believe that full disclosure of what's going on is best. The one time we didn't keep everyone informed, there were problems, but the problems were all really due to the lack of communication.