The Next 2 Weeks

After a couple of days of acid reducer, I was starting to get relief from the heartburn. I had been dealing with abdominal pain from my groin up through my sides, chest and throat. In addition to that pain, there was the nausea plus there was the pain from constipation. All the while, I had to go to work and act like everything was OK. That was probably a good thing because we are what we think, right.  It had been 5 days now without being able to go (if you know what I mean). Then after two days of laxatives, the medicine started to work, it was difficult and painful, finally I had results. I slowly started to overcome some of my side effects. Now I could better experience the feeling of being run over by a train.

I also suffered from three more side effects. The first of these affected my taste and smell. Certain foods tasted bad and certain smells made me want to throw up. Secondly, I started to develop another side effect called Peripheral Neuropathy. The chemo damages ones nerves and or nervous system. My result was that my hands and feet were tingling, burning and I had some numbness. I also soon realized, one day as I tried to jog across the street to avoid a car, that I suffered a loss of coordination, I felt spastic. My final side effect was what is called Chemo Brain. I had difficulty thinking, I became El Stupido. OK I wasn’t that bad, but it was as if I had a touch of dementia. Other side effects of chemo include organ damage, like damage to ones heart, kidneys, etc. (I think that covers most of what happened to me)

It’s hard to remember the protocol of my Lymphoma treatment from 15 years ago; things have changed in the years since. Upon reflection, I had to wait two weeks after treatment to go back to the doctor for my blood work. They wanted the chemo to do its work on my system, killing all the cancer cells (and the good cells too). They wanted to check to see if I had recovered so I could receive my next treatment. I was scheduled to get chemo every three weeks for six treatments. It was now 14 days later and I had an appointment to give some blood so my doctors office could check my CBC. A complete blood count (CBC) measures the concentration of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets in the blood. I went to the office and the nurse drew my blood, gotta love needles! They processed my blood sample and gave me a print out. I was good to go for my next treatment. My white count, as expected, was at the minimum allowable level (around 3.5) but it was good enough to receive another treatment. My other counts were not too bad. I left and went home.

The three-week period between treatments would consist of two weeks of suffering and one week of feeling almost normal (almost). I would eventually find out that the Peripheral Neuropathy side effects would last for a year and a half, but that was OK with me, you know why??? cause I was ALIVE!

Until next time………

The Daze After

It was the day after my first treatment. I woke up in the morning trying to evaluate how I was feeling. At first, it wasn’t too bad and I started thinking everything was good. I took some of the nausea medicine then I took a shower. I wasn't  sold on the nausea medicine, it made me feel even more nauseous. Now that I was fully awake, I could evaluate myself a little better. Then it hit me hard, it was the feeling of having been run over by an 18 Wheeler Mac Truck. I felt totally wasted and I had some anxiety, a side effect from the steroids. plus I wanted to vomit. I got dressed anyway, I made a light breakfast and went into the office to work…life goes on.

It was difficult to concentrate at work and people were asking me how I was doing. I managed to work most of the day. I got the important things squared away and organized my desk and my remaining tasks. Then I left early, it was around 1 P.M. in the afternoon. I drove home, went inside and lay down on the couch. I figured I was going to start having to work an abbreviated schedule, atleast until the side effects wore off. It was only the first day after treatment. I was starting to get heartburn so I propped my self up a bit to alleviate the pain. After some time I had to get up and I chewed some Tums, they helped a little bit. I rested for the remainder of the day suffering with heartburn. I chewed some more Tums  a few more times, then I went to bed.

The next day came and I was still feeling like I had been run over by a truck.  I went into the office and worked until lunchtime. I left and drove to the health food store. I bought some supplements and some vegetables. I also picked up all the health magazines. Then I drove to a department store and bought a Juicer. I decided I wanted to give my body as much nourishment as possible. My new goal was to strengthen my immune system. I drove home and went inside. I was tired so I sat down. I got one of the health food magazines and started to look through it.  After reading for a while, I got up and put up the vegetables, supplements and the Juicer. I made a little food, ate and then lied down. That was my day.

It was the third day after my treatment and now a new problem developed. I had not (cover your ears) had a bowel movement for three days. Now my lower intestines were starting to cramp and became painful. The Dr. didn’t tell me anything about the side effects of heartburn or the constipation. Both became very difficult to deal with. I went to the pharmacy and bought some over the counter medicines for both of these side effects. There are couple more side effects I will discuss next time as they took a while to develop.

In four more days, I was scheduled to go back to my oncologist’s office to have my blood levels checked. In the mean time, I was just hoping I could go to the bathroom. Let me tell you, feeling like I had been run over  by a school bus, the nausea, the heartburn pain and the constipation, were no fun.

But life goes on............

The First Night

The nurse finished going over the post treatment routine with me. She then unhooked the IV from my needle and started to remove the needle from my hand. It was taped on very securely so it took a little work to remove all the tape. It was a little painful as she ripped the hair off the back of my hand. Then she pulled the needle out of my hand and applied a piece of gauze. I held it in place and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t bleeding too much and then she replaced it with another piece of gauze and taped it on. I was just starting to feel the effects of the day. I was a little light-headed and a little dazed but not too bad. I pulled it together, packed up my belongings and said goodbye. They gave me an appointment card to come back in one week so they could check my blood levels.  I walked through the lobby, out the front door and walked to my car. I unlocked the car door, put my belongings inside and got in.

I sat there for a minute thinking about the day. I had just received several bags of poison. That’s what chemo is. It’s like spraying the weeds in your front lawn with poison and waiting a few days for them to start dying. The poison was already making me feel a little weird. It’s hard to describe, but I just felt a little off kilter and I was starting to get a mild headache. I started the car and drove to the pharmacy. I arrived and parked my car and went inside to get my prescriptions filled. I just waited because I definitely did not feel like coming back. After about 25 minutes my prescriptions were ready, I left and drove home
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The full side effects of the treatment were still to come. For now, I just felt wiped out. I went inside my house, threw all my junk on the table and lay down on the couch. I laid there for a few minutes, then I got up and put away my clothes, unpacked my lunch bag and sorted out my prescriptions. I had some strong Ibuprofen, some pills for nausea, some pills for anxiety and some pills for sleeping. I was supposed to take the anxiety and nausea pills every four hours.

I decided I would take a shower and it made me feel a little better.  I made a light dinner and ate light, as I was feeling nauseous, as if I wanted to throw up.  I sat down and started to zone out watching some TV. It was getting late and I figured I would try to go to sleep. I got up and realized I felt like I had been in a fight. It was more like I felt like I had been a punching bag, taking blows to the body all day. I dragged my beaten body to the bathroom so I could brush my teeth. I took the sleeping aid then I dragged myself off to the bed. I laid there for a while and fell asleep.

While I was sleeping the steroids started to produce some of their first side effects. After a couple of hours of sleep, I was awake. I couldn’t get back to sleep, I had anxiety, it was another side effect, and I got up and walked out to the living room. I could have laid in bed and watched TV but I was restless. I was starting to feel my mind racing. I could not read I was a little too antsy for that, but Life always offers a blessing. I turned on the TV and got lucky. My favorite TV show when I was a kid was Walt Disney’s “Zorro”. I was flipping through the channels when I came to the Disney station. They had on a show called  The Vaults of Disney. The show was one of the episodes from "Zorro". Even though I could not sleep, it turned out great, as I was able to watch my favorite TV show. I figured if I was going to be awake every night this woulld be pretty cool. After the show was over I just flipped through the channels for awhile and finally I fell back asleep.

More side effects to come………….

Gettin' The "Juice"

I thought the first bag of “Juice” was chemo, but it wasn’t, it was an anti nausea medicine. They give this to patients to help prevent the feeling of wanting to vomit caused by the chemo. It didn’t take too long to finish that bag, just long enough to make my arm cold. The nurse came over and switched out my bags. She hooked me up to a rather large bag of “Juice” and started the drip, drip, drip.

I told the nurse my arm was getting cold and that it was hurting. She came over and checked the IV and the needle to make sure it all was ok. She told me that the chemo was cold and that it was making my arm hurt. She decided to slow down the drip until the “Juice” warmed up a bit. Now this was back in the day when they did not use pumps to regulate the speed of the drip as they do today. (FYI, I will be starting new treatments on 1-17-2012, I will speak about this in a future blog, but I have 14 years of chemo treatments to cover first).

Receiving all that liquid “Juice” makes one have to go. I carefully stood up so as not to rip the IV out of my hand. The IV pole sits on three wheels; I grabbed the pole and rolled it along as I walked to the restroom. After washing my hands, I went back to my chair and sat back down. Now the challenge was to pass the time. With one hand free and the other attached to an IV, I reached for my bag and pulled out my lunch. I grabbed an Apple and I snacked on it and watched the TV. I think something like Judge Judy was on. After I snacked, I pulled out a book and read for a bit. Then my eyes got droopy, I grabbed my jacket and used it to cover my upper body, I adjusted the recliner back and closed my eyes, I rested for a while.

It took about three hours to finish the big bag of “Juice”. The nurse came over and switched out the bags. Before she hooked up the slightly smaller second bag of “Juice”, she pulled out a syringe and gave me a Push. A push is what they call it when they inject a shot into the port on the IV tube. I asked what that was and she said it was Decadron, more steroids. I had already swallowed my Prednisone steroid tablets and now I was getting more in the form of a shot. The steroids help in shrinking the lymph nodes, but there are side affects.  The nurse hooked up my next bag and started the drip, drip, drip. I still had a couple of hours left, so I reached for my bag and ate the rest of my lunch. Got my book and read a little more and of course had to use the restroom a few more times.

Remember this was my first treatment. As my last bag of “Juice” was nearing the end I looked at the clock, it was 3P.M. I had been there six hours when the nurse cave over and sat down next to me. She gave me a list of instructions on how to cope with the coming side effects. Chemo kills all the fast growing cells in your body. The chemo I was receiving was designed to kill all my white blood cells. It’s like killing your immune system. The chemo does not discriminate in which cells it kills; it just kills them all. Stomach cells, hair cells, etc. all grow fast and that’s why people get sick and lose their hair. The nurse went over the list of instructions and then gave me several prescriptions; for nausea, anxiety, sleeping, pain. I found out later that there were a couple of prescriptions that she did not give me. Those were the ones I REALLY NEEDED. Live and learn.

Side Effects, next time…………….

My First Treatment

I started my treatments in December 1998. Before I left home, I packed a lunch because I knew I was going to be their most of the day. I also brought a jacket so I could stay warm. I arrived at my oncologists’ office around 8:30 a.m. I checked in, paid my co-pay and then went straight to the Infusion Room. I was the first one there and chose a good chair to sit in for the rest of the day.

The first thing the nurse did was take a blood sample. She proceeded to tied off my upper arm, inserted a nice big needle into my vein, and drew my blood. They wanted to run the numbers to get a base line for my white and red blood cell count. During the next five months of treatments, they would be checking my blood count every three weeks.  Oncologist’s offices have the necessary equipment to perform basic blood tests and they completed my blood test in the office. Back in those days, my blood counts were all in the normal range except my white count (WBC) ,which was high, but all the other counts were normal. Normal red count (RBC), normal platelet count and so on. Receiving chemotherapy is not for a person who does not like needles. One is stuck often during the course of treatments.

Now the fun was about to begin. The nurse rolled over a tray type cart that contained all the necessary items to get me hooked up to an IV. Next to each chair was a pole that was used to hang the bags of liquid medicine on. The nurse rolled up a stool and sat next to the side of the chair. I laid my arm straight out on the chair arm and the nurse again tied a rubber tourniquet around my upper arm. Then she started to tap the top of my hand while I made a fist. She picked up the needle and tried to insert it into one of the veins on the top of my hand. Sometimes this only takes one attempt and goes smoothly, but often times it takes two or three attempts. Back in the early days, I had great veins and it was not that hard to thread my vein with the needle. However today my vein seemed to wiggle around a bit and she was having a little difficulty getting the needle in. She would wiggle the needle around under my skin pulling and pushing it in an out and all around trying to find my vein, and it hurt like hell. I’ve heard many a person scream in pain during this process, but I just tighten my jaw and kept silent. The fishing expedition didn’t take too long and finally she was successful. She inserted the needle in my vein and let go of it to see if some blood would come back into the line.  That way she was sure it was in the vein. Then the nurse held the needle and IV tube in place as she secured it to my hand and my arm with tape. That IV wasn’t going anywhere unless I was to accidentally rip it out.

The next procedure was to insert a syringe needle into the IV port and inject saline solution. This was done for two reasons: one was to flush out the vein and the other was to double-check that they were actually in the vein. If for some reason they are not truly in the vein the saline solution will just go into your skin and cause a big lump to form (I will tell you a story about that in a future blog).

When she completed that, I was ready. Now I wasn’t hooked up to any bags yet, I only had a needle in my hand and an IV tube taped to my arm. I took this chance to go to the bathroom. I returned to my chair (yes I was my hands!!!) and sat down. The first of three bags was hanging on the pole. The bags all have tubes coming out off the bottom and the nurse came over and connected the IV bag to my tube. I asked what type of medicine I was receiving and she told me I was just going to get a few more minutes of saline. I decided to give my chemotherapy liquid a nickname; from now on, it would be called The Juice.

The nurse came back and had me swallow a pill. I asked her what it was and she said it was my prednisone (I will tell you more about that later). Then she switched my bag to The Juice. I was now officially receiving my first treatment of chemo. As the bag hung on the pole and I watched it drip, drip, drip, my arm started to get cold.

 Until next time………