First chemo treatment…

Yesterday was my first day of chemotherapy. This little guy was my mascot and will continue to be my mascot and accompany me on my subsequent chemo treatments. He was a very thoughtful and loving gift from my second family also known as wonderful folks from the Poison Center.. I got many compliments on him and I have a sneaky feeling he flirted a bit with the nurses as well..

As I said in my previous post I had many mixed feelings about this day.. yesterday as I knew I would be getting test results as well as starting my chemo. The photo below is the first of three bags of meds to treat the cancer..

First I’ll start off with my test results. The Bone Marrow biopsy did show that while I still have a lot of healthy marrow the cancer has spread to some of the marrow. The PET scan showed that I have quite a few nodes on both sides of my neck just under my ears down near my throat, I have some under both arm pits. My chest wall has many and they have kind of fused together to become a large mass and of course what I already knew I have quite a bit in my abdomen and both sides of my groin, again a lot of the  nodes have fused together to create masses. I had a feeling that these were going to be the results but it was still a bit hard to digest. My oncologist still thinks the chemo can treat it all including the bone marrow. I am just taking all one day or rather one moment at a time. I know that there will be a possibly of a bone marrow transplant as well as other treatments options if the chemo doesn’t work. For now I’m just going to focus on healing.. that is my number one priority. I know that it will help aid the chemo if I help aid in focusing on what I can do to heal myself both mentally and spiritually.

So.. the first day actually receiving the chemo was interesting. Normally you don’t have many if any sx’s while getting it at the time. Usually its after.. the next or two. Well.. I ended up having a reaction about 45 min’s into the first bag I was given (the one pictured above). They give the first bag slowly over the first hour due to possibly allergic reactions. They did give it to me slowly as per usual. About 45 min’s into it I started having this very weird feeling on my skin.. kind of like a light tingly sensation. I wasn’t sure if it was the benadryl they gave me or the prednisone I took earlier. I didn’t say anything at first because I wasn’t quite sure what it was or if I was just imagining it as the benadryl had made me a bit loopy. I told the RN when it started feeling a little more so, about 5 min’s after I first noticed it. She had mentioned that wasn’t a normal reaction but stayed with me to see how I felt. I then started feeling it more and more all over my body. Nothing too major just a tingling sensation. I had asked to use the rest room and she walked me  and my chemo IV to the rest room which wasn’t too far from my chemo chair. I went to the bathroom and as we were walking back I started getting really cold.. mind you this place has been very warm up till now. I was slightly hot all morning. Now I was really cold, I started shaking and having tremors. She sat me back down, got another RN and they said decided they wanted to get my MD involved. They stopped the chemo med. My MD was there within a few minutes and said this can be a bad side effect of the med. Not normally seen but it can happen. They gave me three more meds to help control all the shaking and chills, I also developed bad back pain and it radiated through my body. Those meds started working within 10-15 min’s.. I can’t tell you how great it felt to not have all that coldness and shaking going on. I started crying when it was really bad.. it was like I couldn’t help it.. I had no control over what was going on with my body. It was a very strange thing to experience. All in all it took about 2 hrs from the time it happened to the time they reintroduced the med. They started it again at even a much slower rate then previously, due to the new meds on board I thankfully did not have any other reactions. The following two meds were fine and other then feeling slightly dizzy and sleepy I did feel fine from then on.

I was hooked up for 8 hours.. a very very long day.. we left home at 7:40 am and didn’t get home till 9:00 that night. We left the chemo treatment around 5:15 and got some dinner at Whole Foods and then I stopped by work to check in with them. Finally got home around 9:00, exhausted and spent.

I have to say that I can’t imagine having had to go through what had happened with out the wonderful nurses that were in that treatment room. They were wonderful! Happy, positive and so very, very caring. You know they are working there because they want to not because they have to. As soon as I walked in that morning I half expected to be walking into a solemn, depressing area. Instead I heard laughter, jokes, and love. All between the chemo patients , their visitors and the nurses. It really was an amazing experience and even with the hours drive each way I can’t imagine going anywhere else to have my treatments done.

It is now Friday, two days after my treatment. I tried to get this out yesterday but wasn’t feeling up to it and today I’m not feeling great and just piecing it together little by little but its now finally done. My first chemo day.. it was a pretty rough one but I made it.. and I have many people to thank for helping me make it. So thank you, you all know who you are..

Happy Easter to all..

~ peace ~