Chemo Cycle 1
My infusion appointment is for 10:00. I had to take 5 steroid pills before bed last night and 5 more this morning. My parents come over again to watch the kids. They have definitely been a lifesaver during all of this. We check in at the infusion desk and then take a seat in the waiting room. I take a look around at those that are there with me. There is a wide range of ages. One younger looking man is there with his wife I assume. We have seen him working in the parking garage. DH heard him give his birthyear as 1971 when hr checked in, so a few years older than me. A lady comes through pushing a cart with small juice cans and snacks on it and makes the rounds asking if anyone wants anything. I get an apple juice and a bag of peanuts. DH also gets something.
After waiting for a few more minutes they call me back into the infusion room and show me to my chair where I will spend the majority of the day. It's kind of a lounge chair where I can fully recline if I want. They see that I have a port and ask if we will be using it today. I said that the doctor wants to wait since I just had it put in on Tuesday. They look at it and agree and then get someone over to put an IV in my vein. Apparently they start at the hand and then work their way up the arm until they find a good spot. Mine they put in right around the wrist on my left arm. They tell me some warnings to watch for that indicate that the IV spot is potentially going bad or leaking out - a burning or stinging feeling. It turns out that the nurse that will be serving me today is the same one who introduced herself to us last week when we came by to visit the room. She was a really nice and friendly nurse who talked us through everything she was doing. There were several medications that she had to administer to me through my IV before we start the chemo drugs. The reason they do these first is to hopefully counter any side-effects that I may get from the chemo drugs. We're all a little unsure how I will respond to any of the drugs because I am the type of person who only takes medicine if I feel I absolutely have to. The first one that they gave me was Benadryl (which I have not taken in recent memory because I don't have allergies to anything that I know of). It turns out that this was the only drug that I showed any type of reaction to. I felt really loopy and light-headed for about 45 minutes or so and then that wore off. After the Benadryl they gave me Pepcid and then more steroids. They then waited about 15 minutes before we actually started on the chemo infusion - which we didn't start until about 12:15!! Then it was 3 1/2 hours of the first drug, flush the bag and then 1 1/2 hours of the second drug with another flush of the bag. Then I think they just gave me some saline through the IV. The second drug they started out really slowly because it can cause some reactions, but when I didn't show any they increased the rate. Overall I think the nurse was pleasantly surprised that I didn't appear to have any reactions to anything (other than the Benadryl) and that I felt relatively fine at the end.
Wow it was a long day! I had brought some reading material and then my ipad so I could start this blog. I ended up not reading anything, but I did write several blog entries. Towards the beginning we kept having people come in to talk to us. The lady in charge of the clinical trials came and gave me my appointment/infusion schedule for the next couple of cycles and then a lady came and asked if I would sign up for another trial they are doing where you call in each day and answer questions about the symptoms/problems you have been having and then offer solutions to help you deal with them. There is a small monetary stipend that they give you for participating. I agreed to do it and I was "randomized" into the group that gets follow up calls from a nurse practitioner if you trigger certain alerts with the computer system. She thought that was the better group to be in. Then we also had another person come in and hand us some financial help info in case we need it.
DH stayed with me the whole time - only leaving twice to get us some lunch from the cafeteria upstairs (once to take some pictures of the menu for me and then the second time to get our food). I can eat or drink anything I want while I'm there and can have up to two visitors at a time. The snack cart came by once or twice to see if we wanted anything and they have a small refrigerator with some drinks in it as well. They come by about every hour to take your blood pressure and temperature - man that blood pressure cuff hurts sometimes!
By the time we were done, it was almost 5:00!! It was depressing seeing people come in and then leave while I was just sitting there the whole time! And because of traffic and construction we didn't make it back home until after 6:30! Thankfully an aunt and uncle of DH had offered to bring us dinner that evening so when we got home we had dinner there waiting for us. It's been nice having people offer to bring us meals so that we would have one less thing to worry about!
After all of that I was a little tired just from everything that had gone on that day, but I didn't have any trouble sleeping that night.
