The Chemo Chronicles: 7.11.08

This was some chemo treatment, let me tell you.  Here it is Monday night, and I am just now writing about it - 3 days later.  This was my worst treatment yet.  I don’t feel that I can fairly complain, as my treatment to now have gone without a hitch - the main complaints being thrush once, fatigue and indigestion.  But this one has been very hard to deal with.  This was my second treatment with the Nitrogen Mustard, and I wonder if that is what is doing it.  As well as the fact, I used to have chemo every other week - now I am having treatments for two weeks straight, then two weeks off.  I’m wondering if I haven’t had enough time to recoup from the last treatment to this one and it’s knocked me off my butt.

I took some pictures.  This seems to be a continuing trend - I want to be able to look back and remember it all, as well as share it with all my readers.  With that being said, let’s have at it.

I took both of my kids with me.  My youngest wasn’t feeling well that day, so I stayed home from work to take care of her.  They got to go to my chemo as a perk, I guess.  They had been there once before, so it wasn’t a complete shock to them.  They act pretty well in there, so the nurses haven’t complained that they shouldn’t be there.  April, my chemo nurse said as long as they keep their hands out of the sharps container they should be fine.  I joked with her and we went inside.

When we got inside, a previous nurse of mine, Shannon, who is an awesome nurse, pulled me aside to make sure I was okay.  If you can tell from the pictures, I hadn’t taken off my makeup from the night before, so my eyes were dark (as they usually are anyhow), but she wanted to make sure I was okay, I guess, and no one had given me a “shiner”.  I assured her everything was fine, and that I had just been tired and lazy and not taken off my makeup.  My nurse, Diann, from the previous week could tell I wasn’t feeling well either.  I am usually the most bubbly person in the chemo room, cracking up joking and trying to make the best of everything, but Friday I just wasn’t up for it.  I had already made an early morning trip to Walmart, cleaned and rearranged my patio, planted about 10 plants and just had overdone myself in my time of prior fatigue.  By the time I made it to the chemo chair, I was about done for.

The port process:

April, my nurse, cleaning my port, to prepare it for hooking it up to the IV line.  It must be sterile since the port drains into a major artery.  If not sterile, I could face a huge infections, which I REALLY can’t afford to get.  It doesn’t burn or sting, just some cold…wet stuff.  I know there is a name for it, but don’t ask me, I’m clueless.  I know they yellowish/brown version of this is betadine.  This is the same I guess, without the yellowish/brown color.  They just clean it for a few seconds and then let it dry for a minute or so before inserting the catheter into the port.

My port once attached to the line.  Just a simple disc with a needle that sticks straight out the back.  They spray it with what is called cold spray to numb it.  Have not had a painful stick yet, and I HATE needles.  I love me some cold spray!  It just sits there on top of my skin, leaking into the port beneath the skin, they usually anchor it down with some guaze or tape like in the picture so it doesn’t fall out.  Then they just pull it out when they’re done and slap a band-aid on it.

Drawing blood from my port prior to starting the infusion.  This process has not always been an easy one.  Sometimes, they say, the catheter can get stuck up against the inside of my blood vessel, and when they go to draw blood the catheter just sucks on the side of the vessel wall.  They say it’s common, but they have you doing all sorts of stuff to try to get it to move, raising my hands in the air, reclining…Coughing.  I feel like an acrobat with COPD by the time it’s done.  Before chemo, they have to make sure my red blood cell and white blood cell counts aren’t too low for treatment.  Chemo kills off all cells, not just the bad ones, so they have to make sure they won’t further deplete what few cells I do have.

The treatment itself went fine.  I was there at 2 and left probably about 4:45.  I wasn’t there for too long, at least not as long as I used to be for the A_VD, that was a nearly 5 hour process.  I didn’t have any reactions, and everything seemed to be fine.  The worse was the indeigestion - I had been taking 2 ranitidine a day (Zantec), but that stopped working.  She gave me Pepcid through the IV and got me a prescription for omeprazole - the same as Prilosec, which has helped tremendously.

Friday night I was just asolutely beat.  I made it through Albertson’s just long enough to get a couple food items needed for the weekend, then I went home and crashed.  I don’t remember being up late, 10:30 at the lastest, which, for me…Is actually quite early.  I do remember sleeping through the night though.  I didn’t get up once, it was magnificent.  Until it reached 5am, and I was wide awake.  Being on-call for work a lot, 4 or 5 in the morning is a usual for me.  I ran to 7-11 then, had to pick up something (yes, at 5am) and made it back home.  I was exhausted, and because my feet were killing me again (I wish I could figure that one out), I took 2 oxycodone to ease the pain and get back to sleep for awhile.  I made it to 8am, working on my website then was able to pass out again til about 11am.  As Saturday went on, though I started to feel weird.  I thought that I just hadn’t come completely down from the oxy fog, but it seemed to get worse.  I then went out to eat Chinese food with Terrence, and ate fried rice made with soy sauce, which I am not allowed to have due to my food-restrictions with the Procarbazine.  I attributed me feeling weirder and worse to that.  I’m thinking it might not be so.  Driving home I got extremely dizzy, and 2 days later it’s not gone away.

I woke up yesterday morning in the same pain, with my feet.  I tried to take one oxycodone in order to take the edge off.  After it hadn’t worked I decided to take another one a couple hours later.  Finally the foot pain wore off, but I kept getting these crazy dizzy spells.  I thought since I had taken two separate doses of the oxy, that THAT perhaps was why I was having the dizzy spells.  Nope.  Still having them.  All day yesterday, though, I was way in and out of it.  I would be up and feel light-headed and woozie and think I would need to lay down and sleep.  But then I would lay down and be wide awake and would try to get up.  It’s like my head wasn’t happy with anything I tried.  I ended up being awake way too late last night - until about 1:30, I think, just because I was so uncomfortable feeling in the head.  It’s only gotten worse today, and doesn’t seem to be easing up.  I don’t feel tired or sleepy, but I feel completely depleted and in a continual head fog.  I feel like I smoked too much of some bad weed and just can’t step out of it.

As a result, I have been sitting here writing this post for upwards of 2 hours now.  Talk about a task.  And all I am doing is laying in my bed with my laptop, and this seems a chore.  Hopefully by weeks end I can come out of this some.  If not, I might have to make a trip to the cancer center.  Feeling like this is getting way old.

Some other side effects I have noticed with this treatment:

It seems my tounge is void of taste buds.  It looks neat too, I thought of taking a picture of that one, but decided to spare you.  You’re welcome.  I can’t taste hardly anything, and if I do it is off.  I was eating buttered popcorn earlier and it tasted like cheddar cheese.  I was eating macaroni and cheese and it tasted like black olives.  I hate black olives and have had that taste in my mouth ever since.

I have previously had the pins and needles feeling in the tips of one or two fingers (this is common with chemo treatments), but my whole right hand seems to be mostly numb from the 2nd knukle down to the end of my fingers.  I have it on my left hand as well, but it’s not as bad.  It was a bear writing at work today, though, because I couldn’t really write - couldn’t feel anything, and it seemed all my movements were overly-controlled in order to just get something to scrawl across the paper.  Will have to keep an eye on this too.

I finish my round of oral chemo this Friday, and will get to be off chemo until the 1st.  I need a break from this, this has really been a very long 1 and a 1/2 week.  And to just think this will continue until at least February.  Sigh.  It’s ok, I can handle it - this is going to make me better in the long run.  Whew - it’s just hard to remind myself of that, sometimes!!