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| 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! :-)
