I started chemo on Friday. Everything went well during the treatment. The oncologists prepare your body with drugs to ensure that they’re aren’t major incidents. I had to take 5 Dexamethason the night before and the day of chemo, its a steroid that is used as an anti-inflammatory. I also had to take an Emend the day of chemo which helps with nausea, the nurses seem to think it was overkill for my oncologist to recommend it but I’m glad he did because I did have some nausea after the treatment and it probably would have been worse if I didn’t have the Emend. I also received an IV cocktail of Zofran for nausea and Benadryl to make sure I didn’t have an allergic reaction to the Taxol.
But even with all those drugs there was still a chance of my body having an allergic reaction after the first 10 minutes of the chemo drugs. So, when they hooked me up to the Taxol I was concerned but then I got distracted by the Maury Povich Show and the DNA results from a husband who had all four of his children tested to determine if they were his (all of the kids look exactly alike — I wasn’t exactly surprised to learn he was the father of all four). Blessedly, my body didn’t have an allergic reaction to the drugs. I asked the nurse what would they do if I did have a reaction, she said they would try harder to prepare my body to accept the drugs. I hate to think how much more drugs I would have to take for that!
I wasn’t as emotional about the chemo as I thought I would be. I cried a little in the car ride as we were taking our daughters to school but didn’t while I was getting chemo. I wasn’t depressed by the whole experience as I thought I would be. I looked at the blessings that I had and it made me feel better, blessings like having a wonderful husband who sat by my side to help me make it through the day. He got me tea and cookies and went to the local pizzeria for lunch. I asked him to get a sausage roll which are usually pretty small but he brought back one big enough for three people to eat. I tried to unload it on the nurses and the husband of one of the patients but no one was interested so we had to throw it away.
We had some really good news before we started the chemo so that probably contributed to my good mood. The last day I was in the hospital they drew blood to test to see how much cancer was in my system. It’s called a CA-125 test and it’s used with ovarian cancer. My number was over 900, a normal number according to my oncologist is 40. The doctor told me that after surgery my body would flush out the fluids and the cancer cells and that number would drop. They took another sample when I visited the office last and the number did drop to 295! I was really happy it went down that far. This is our new baseline and if the chemo is working properly, that number should go down. That’s our prayer.
I was really happy I got the mediport when we started chemo. They used it to draw blood and insert the IV and I barely felt it throughout the day which would not have been the case if I had an IV in my arm. The women who had IVs in their arms couldn’t move their arm or the machine would beep, they had to keep it flat on a pillow for most of their treatment. I was able to use my arms and didn’t have to be incapacitated throughout the 5 hours I was there. An added benefit that I didn’t even realize when I had it implanted.
The problems I was having with the port after it was implanted (the pain when I swallowed and the tenderness over the injection site), cleared up by time I went for the port check at the Radiology department at the hospital. The technicians were pretty surprised that I had trouble swallowing, they said that they hadn’t heard of that problem before.
After the chemo I was feeling OK, a little nauseous but OK. My husband made dinner but I found it a little hard to eat, I wasn’t really that hungry. My appetite is pretty much gone, I have hunger pangs but as soon as I start eating I lose interest in the food and have to force myself to eat. I also don’t want to drink and have to force myself to do so because I’m supposed to be drinking plenty of fluids. But nothing tastes good to me anymore. The only things I enjoy eating are strawberries and cantaloupe and even with them I have to force myself to eat.
That night I had a terrible time sleeping. I woke up at 2 am and couldn’t go back to sleep until 6 am. I had to sleep on the couch and watch shows off the Internet to relax enough to sleep. I woke up again at 8:40. Not much sleep but I didn’t feel tired. I felt itchy (on my arms and by my left eye) which bothered me. I was worried I was having a belated allergic reaction to the chemo, so I called the oncologists’ office and one of the doctors who was on call called me back immediately and told me to take Benadryl, which I did for most of Saturday. It seemed to help with the itching and it also helped me make up for the lost sleep from the night before.
We also went shopping for a wig on Saturday. The nurse told me that in two weeks my scalp would start tingling and I would start losing my hair. I decided to try to buy a wig as close as possible to my original hair to give my daughters as much normalcy as possible. I found a hairstyle similar to one that I’ve had in the past (a shoulder length bob) and we were able to match the color pretty closely. No gray though 🙂
Today I spent the day groggy from taking a Claritin-D to clear up congestion and a sore throat. I can’t wait to get off all these antihistamines to see how I feel being on the chemo. I’m having a harder time with the drugs to manage the chemo than the chemo itself 🙂
Tomorrow I get a shot that will boost my white blood count. You take it within 72 hours of getting the chemo but it doesn’t kick in until your white blood count is at its lowest. Pretty cool, huh? It should help me to avoid getting sick and it will also help me not to get so tired.