For months I had been looking forward to going to a concert at the Oregon Zoo. The concert series at the Zoo is one of the highlights of summer in the Pacific Northwest. The stage is set up right next to the elephant exhibit, and you are able to sit on lawn chairs and blankets, with food available from some of Portland’s best restaurants.

We’ve been for the past 3 summers and this year we had tickets to see our favorite band, Death Cab for Cutie. My husband and I have been to countless of their shows– in fact, back in 2011 we saw them in New Orleans while I was pregnant with our first son, and it was during that show that my husband felt our baby move for the first time!

We did go this year, but I had a new accessory. Unfortunately the day of the concert my infection-fighting white blood cells were found to be critically low, putting me at higher risk for infections. This decrease was a side effect of my chemotherapy. When my oncology team told me my infection fighting cells were low, and I brought up our plans for that night– they recommended that I stay home. After some discussion, they said that, knowing the risks, if I still wanted to go, I would need to take some extra precautions. For me to go to the concert, in order to avoid getting sick, I went looking like this:

I’m wearing a foldable N-95 mask, which keeps airborne and droplet infectious particles away from whoever is wearing it– an added protection from disease. Other than this, I had 2 hand sanitizer bottles and was constantly washing my hands to avoid exposure to bacteria that might make me sick. This is not exactly how I imagined going to the concert, but was glad we found a way to experience this event when not everything was going the way we predicted. If you’ve been reading, you know how much I hate it when plans change.

I was so glad we were able to go– boys had a great time too

The concert was amazing. And so far I’m not sick! But– cross your fingers so that on Monday my labs are all trending in the right direction, and I’ll be able to start my 3rd cycle of chemo, which has now been delayed a week given the slow recovery of my labs from the last cycle.