Round 5 / A Long, Exhausting Day

Don't worry, I am not jaundiced! I just put on too much bronzer...

The following post may or may not make any sense since I wrote some of it at the hospital and some later at home. It also might not make sense because I am so tired after spending about 7 hours at the hospital that I almost feel sort of drunk.

8:45 AM : Arrived at the cancer center.

10:00 AM : I’m sitting in my “chemo booth” in the big chemo room at the cancer center, getting my IV pre-chemo drugs (steroids, nausea meds, Benadryl to prevent an allergic reaction). They do blood work before each treatment to make sure I am healthy enough to get the immune system killing chemo drugs and as always, I got the green light. I already talked to Dr. Gore (and gave him my painting!) before I came back to the chemo room. He decided after I get my chemo drugs, I’m going to get my abdomen tapped again. He noted that it is not as swollen as it was the last time it was tapped (after round 3) and that it took longer to swell up this time, which is good. However, because the fluids have returned, he is going to have them studied and I am coming back in next week for various scans to see how this treatment plan is going. After he looks at all the results he will make a decision about whether or not I will need more chemo than originally planned and if he needs to switch to different chemo meds. I really hope that I won’t need extra chemo, or if it is necessary to get more, he doesn’t switch to much harsher drugs. But yes, ultimately I care the most about killing all the cancer cells in me. 

11:15 AM : I’m currently being pumped full of taxol, the first chemo drug they give me each time. I took a half-asleep/ half-awake nap for a while. I take a lot of those kinds of naps lately because I can’t seem to fall all the way asleep most of time I’d like a nap. I couldn’t even fall half asleep at first because the woman getting chemo to my left had a very loud, talkative male visitor. I was extra annoyed because he wasn’t even talking about anything serious or urgent, it was just boring things like the board game “candy land.” Luckily, since I don’t really like confrontation, my sweet grandmother asked him very nicely to be a bit quieter. And thankfully he did quiet down and I was able to rest a bit. My dad brought me a chicken sandwich that smells really good so I’m going to eat that now.

1:15 PM : I just finished getting my second chemo drug, carboplatin. Now I just have to finish getting my regular fluids (0.9% Sodium Chloride) and then I’ll go over to radiology to get my abdomen drained. The woman that was to my left that had the noisy visitor finished a little while ago and an elderly woman with a temperature of 107 replaced her. This new woman obviously is too sick to get chemo today. Her doctor popped by to tell her he suspected her medical port was infected and now she is going to be admitted to the hospital at least overnight. I feel fortunate that I have not had an episode like that, even with the disadvantage of having diabetes. 

1:45 PM : Dr. Gore surprised me by coming by to talk to me again. I did not expect him to come back and I was eating a bit of a candy bar when he walked up because I was only hungry enough at lunch to eat a few bites of my chicken sandwich. I know I looked a bit guilty when he walked up because that isn’t exactly ideal diabetic food. However, he came to talk to me about something exciting and awesome! He had sent a picture of my painting in a text message to his wife, who is a retired gynecologist, and she loved it and said it should be submitted to a medical journal as a patient’s interpretation of her illness! Dr. Gore thought it might even be a good idea to also send the actual CT scan of my tumor as well for comparison. He said that he needed to ask my permission though and wanted to know if it would be ok to include my name and possibly my picture. I told him I thought it was great and I had no problem with any of that but for some reason he wanted me to wait and think about it some more. I just think it would be really exciting to be in a medical journal though I did tell Dr. Gore I would be a bit embarrassed that my painting wasn’t perfectly correct anatomically. He said that was part of what was good about it, because it was just my interpretation of what was going on in my body. I’m going to end up leaving out a lot of the details of what he said but I was so tired while he was talking to me, I had a hard time really focusing. 

By the time I was done talking to Dr. Gore, my IV fluid bag was finally empty so I could head over to radiology to get my abdomen drained (paracentesis). The two nurses that did the ultrasound to check out the best spot to slice me for draining did not think I looked swollen enough to be tapped. They said if the radiologist felt I didn’t have enough also, they could not do the procedure. I brought up the fact that Dr. Gore wanted some of the fluid to be tested (so they must have to get at least a little bit of it out of me somehow). Ultimately, the doctor came in and said he would go ahead with the procedure but did not feel that I had very much fluid to drain. I was anxious about the numbing shot since it hurt more than anything else last time so I sheepishly asked the nurse that seemed nicest if she would hold my hand. She was very sweet about it. Thankfully, the numbing shot didn’t hurt nearly as much as last time for some reason, but the stick-thing (I have no idea what it’s actually called) the radiologist had to insert into my abdomen to drain me hurt so much going in that I felt like I might throw up. I thought it was odd since last time that part was only mildly uncomfortable, but it could be because I had a lot less fluids in me. He was surprised that a lot more fluids came out than he expected though. I commented that the color of the fluid was different this time… last time it looked more like a dark beer (this time it was yellowish). He said, “You’re my kind of woman! This time it’s more like a Miller Lite!” He was an interesting character. When I was completely drained, I was so happy that it was finally time to leave the hospital. I set up the appointments to get my Neulasta shot tomorrow, my CT scan Monday, and an appointment to discuss all the test results with Dr. Gore on Wednesday. So next Wednesday is the day I will find out my fate as far as more chemo goes. I said goodbye to my dad and my grandmother, both of whom had stayed with me all that time and left the hospital with my mom at 3:40. I don’t think I have the words to describe how exhausted I felt (still feeling).

4:20 PM : Finally home! I’m so happy to be lying in my bed! Even though I can’t imagine being more exhausted than this, some good things happened today to help balance out the parts that were not so pleasant. I don’t know what I will do until bedtime but it will definitely be something that requires little to no energy. I’m sorry if this post is too long (I left a quite a few things out to make it shorter) and is a bit of a mess… I’m so tired that I can’t seem to think clearly or type things out correctly. Chemo brain is on in full force at the moment. 

I want to add one last thing before I go into rest mode. I felt kind of shitty that I didn’t have a painting to give to Dr. Barnes, the surgeon who actually removed the tumor I painted and who also put in my medical port. Maybe I can think of something to paint for him but I don’t have any new ideas at the moment. 

Oh, and one more thing that just randomly popped into my head. If you read this blog regularly, you might remember a post in which I talked about feeling guilty because I accidentally took a car air freshener without paying for it. Well, I am happy to report that I went back to that store this last Saturday to pay the $2 and some change I owed them for the air freshener! :-)