Round 6

Today was my 6^th chemo treatment and you’d think I’d have figured out how to pick the best chair in the chemo room by now but it seems like I always manage to pick one of the worst. I guess there are about 14 main recliners in the chemo room - I’ve never actually counted. Today must have been a slow day for some reason because about half the recliners were empty when I was called back (after finding out my white count and platelet count are now acceptable for receiving IV poisons/chemo). I stupidly picked the recliner in what I was telling myself was the quiet corner at the time. It turns out I did not really pick a quiet spot however because I was in between some kind of office that multiple people use (with the door left open) and the nurses’ station. Also, the elderly woman to my right was getting chemo for the very first time and sounded nervous about everything. I feel sympathetic for her but this meant less quiet time for me. One of the nurses had to give her the speech every patient gets before they start getting their chemo drugs for the first time: side effects and some of the ways to deal with side effects, to tell a nurse immediately if the chemo starts making you feel out of the ordinary at all, when to call the doctor about problems after going home, etc. Each nurse throws in some random tips and I always catch something new when I overhear the spiel. Whatever type of cancer she has is causing her a lot of pain in her lower back so she had to talk to her doctor for a long time about managing the pain. He said her chemo should start to help with the pain in a week or two. I have to be thankful I don’t have to deal with pain like that on top of all these other problems. 

I was able to fall asleep quickly after she was done talking to her doctor and didn’t wake up again until I starting getting the first chemo drug, taxol (before the chemo drugs comes IV steroids, then antacid, then IV Benadryl, ,then IV nausea meds… after taxol comes carboplatin). I convinced the nurse to rearrange things so that I was getting my bag of IV fluids at the same time as the chemo drugs instead of after both chemo drugs. She said I shaved about 2 extra hours from my stay there. While she was rearranging the bags and lines, I asked her if a lot of other people getting chemo had trouble with eye irritation like me. Even though I’ve been to an eye doctor twice about it to make sure it’s not an infection (it’s not), the irritation just seems to get worse and worse despite all the eye drops she has given me. The nurse told me a lot of people do have trouble with irritation and some of it has to do with loss of eyelashes. I hadn’t even thought of that. Eyelashes are meant to help protect your eyes from various things that can get in and irritate them. I have almost no lashes left as this point so it makes sense. 

I suppose chemo went smoothly today but I slept through most of it so who knows… I doubt I missed anything unusual or exciting. I was so tired that when I got home from chemo, I went back to sleep again for a while. I told my mom that if this keeps up, by the 8^th treatment, I’ll be in bed all the time and I’ll need a baby monitor or bell to call her when I need to be fed or my bed pan needs to be changed (kidding, I do not have a bed pan). My oncologist popped by my chemo cubicle for a moment but what he said is slightly fuzzy because I was so tired and I have an awful memory. I think he said I don’t have much, if any, fluid buildup in my abdomen now, which is a good sign. He feels we probably do need to space out the last 2 chemo treatments with 4 weeks recovery period instead of three weeks, but he wants to check my blood work in two weeks to see where I stand. He said he thinks he wants to stick to 8 treatments but I took this to mean there is a slight possibility of less. :-D

I’m sorry if this post is a mess, but when I haven’t been asleep today, I’ve felt half asleep (including now). Maybe this post is too “cancer-y” and boring, but after all, this is my cancer blog that I’m using to keep some semblance of a record of my experiences with cancer. 

I want to add that a lot of people have been saying to me “Almost finished!” or something along those lines lately. It doesn’t upset me at all because I know that each person who says it is just trying to be encouraging, but I don’t feel “almost finished” at all. If everything goes perfectly with no immune systems crashes or major bouts of sickness, I should get my last treatment in August. But if I continue to feel worse with each treatment, I will feel at my very worse after I’m “done.” Then I was told it takes a long time to fully recover back to my normal level of energy and an even longer time for my immune system to fully recover. Then I hope when Dr. Gore decides I’m in remission Dr. Barnes will take this god-forsaken port-a-cath out of my chest, even though that means a 3^rd surgery this year. And even after that when I go into remission, my type of cancer has a high possibility of reoccurrence so I might have to go through all this torture all over again. Ok, now I’d stop because I just sound whiny. Isn’t that what blogs are for?