so sorry, admin blog site was down yesterday so I couldn't blog about chemo day! It ended up to be very uneventful, which is good, and went much faster than we anticipated. Showed up at 1:15pm, got weighed, took blood pressure and inserted IV. They drew blood to get my blood count (white cells being the most important), results take 5 minutes. They will do this every time to make sure I am healthy enough to get chemo. Dr. Kurup came in and quizzed me on what we were doing today :) Keeping me on my toes! I, as usual, had a page of questions that I had come up with over the week and she patiently answered all of them.
The nurse who was assigned to me for the day, Lena, was a lovely woman - swedish transplant, and was very kind and gentle with us all. Oh, forgot to mention that Bob and my Mom came with me :) When Lena was inserting my IV she looked at my arm for a long long time. I asked her about ports and she said she would prefer for me to get a port for next time. It would make things easier for them, and easier for me. We talked about the procedure (just local anesthetic - I had thought I would be knocked out) and set one up for the morning of my next chemo day. They can be accessed almost right away, so no wait.
We were ushered into the infusion room after the blood counts were back and got to pick where we wanted to sit. It was about half full so we had our pick of chairs. First Lena set up my bag of anti-nausea and steroid drip, which takes 30 minutes to drain. Then she set up a saline bag which is how the "A" part of chemo is administered. She has to sit with us the whole time and hand administer the A since that is the nasty one where if it gets out of your vein at all could cause burning and nerve damage, so they closely monitor it. It only took about 10 minutes. Then we moved on to the bag of "C" which took about 45 minutes. All in all it seemed very quick. When the "C" was done and my IV pole started beeping another nurse (not Lena) came over and said, ok you are done! And we all said "are you sure? can you check with Lena? that was quick...." And yes we were done. It was 4pm. The only major drawback for me is that you are sitting under fluorescent lights with your back to the window, so by the end I had a major headache...fluorescent lights do that to me. So for my next time I can either turn my chair around and look out the window (hello, why don't more people do this?) or get a private room.
We checked out, made our appointment for the port surgery (7:30 am on 5/27) and for chemo (noon on 5/27) so it looks like I'll be at the hospital all day! They had called in my meds to Fred Meyer by my parents house, so we drove picked those up and headed home. Home by 5pm. I was feeling ok, maybe a little woozy.....slight jet lag feeling. Lena had suggested I take Zofran (one of the anti nausea drugs) right away so that we are ahead of the nausea. She was concerned because I mentioned that I did get nauseous with pregnancy and it's not terribly uncommon for me to get nauseous. So with that recommendation, I took the Zofran and we headed out with Thomas on a stroll around the neighborhood. It was a gorgeous night - 61 degrees, sunny, big beautiful puffy clouds. My headache was starting to go away, but the Zofran was kicking in ....feeling groggy, more intense jet lag. We had dinner early - 6pm - then Bob put Thomas to bed while I watched and I got in bed. They had said that the intravenous steroids they gave me might keep me up at night the first day, so they gave me Adavan - sleep pill/anti-anxiety/anti-nausea pill. I took that at 8 because I was still awake and dozed off.
Unfortunately the first night was not a cake walk....which they warned me. I woke up every 2 hours....little nauseous (ate some saltines, drank some water), then around 1am started to get wicked stomach cramps. I stumbled out of the room and found the heating pad in the next room (Bob was upset since he wanted me to wake him out for those things since he said it looked like I was walking like I needed my appendix out). Heating pad wasn't really working. 3am asked Bob to get me advil. Ahhhh, relief. Slept for a couple hours. Hit up Bob for advil again 6am. Slept some more. Thomas was a total gem and decided to sleep until NINE A.M! So did Mom :)
I snuggled with Thomas this morning, then brought him upstairs where Gigi (aka my mom, Judy) fed him breakfast while I tried to eat something. Not much of an appetite, but not nauseous (knock on wood), just groggy......
I feel like maybe I am groggy from the meds (Zofran and Adavan) and from little sleep. I am hoping that it what it is. Today the goal is to go get my tried and true anti-nausea things I used when I was pregnant (no side effects!): ginger tea & honey ginger tonic. I am also going to try and take a stroll around the neighborhood and get some naps in. We will see how that goes!
One day done....lots more to go :)
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