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………