Home of My New Best Friends 
Waiting for Blood Results to Get The Show on The Road
Drawing Blood
All Hooked Up and Ready to Go
Hey Look Hats! 
And Wigs!
Chemo Poison Number One - Shouldn't it be red and bubbling?
My Buddy Stephen Colbert Helping Me Through The Bad Times
Lucky Sunflower Socks!
The Perfect Support Team!
Quiet Moment in Chemo Room
Done!It was a long day but we had a good time - well, as good as you can have starting chemo. Having my sister and brother-in-law there was probably the only way I made it. We got there at 8:30 or so for the blood work. They had some problems finding the lab request so that added to the waiting but once they found it we got the show on the road. They used my port to draw the three huge vials of blood they needed and it was so easy. All they did was spray on some cold spray of some sort and then stuck the needle in. I didn't feel a thing. We were then given an hour off for breakfast and my sister and I had a couple of huge awesome breakfast burritos. We then got to go back for a meet and greet with the oncologist and he said the blood results looked good so off to the chemo room we went. There were others in the room - I think up to 6 of us at one point. I was the only one under 55 and was only one of two females during the whole day. I definitely felt out of place. All of the other men were a bit gruff. The guy sitting next to me for most of the day spent most of his time coughing and hacking in our direction while having inappropriate conversations on his phone. If I didn't have my support staff there to talk to me I would have been very uncomfortable. I'm glad my little sister didn't leave me like I kept trying to get her to. The first thing the nurse did was give me a couple of meds to help with the nausea. One first was just a quick shot into my IV - Aloxi - and then other took 20 minutes of dripping - Decadron, a steroid. In between every step they dripped in saline to move things along. After the two anti-nausea meds they started the Taxotere. Watching the first drip was the hardest. It looked just like the saline - You would think it would at least be smoking or bubbling - but it just looked normal. It dripped really fast and I knew then it was too late to stop the process. I hoped I wasn't making a huge mistake. Killing you body to save your body - just doesn't make sense. But there we were. There were three of us newbies there that day so we took our IV stands with us and had a chemo orientation in the breast cancer resource room. There was the nurse and a social worker. We talked about side effects , resources, nutrition, procedures, etc. It was nice. I even stayed behind and picked out a new wig. The Theresa I believe. Angel Nancy came by the chemo room and brought by hand knitted caps - so I got a couple of fun soft ones to sleep in. Then it was back to the chemo room and chemo number two - Cytoxan. The Taxotere and the Cytoxan each took an hour to complete. Then I got a shot of Neulasta in my left arm. Neulasta is a white blood cell booster to help protect against chemo-related infection. This part hurt more than anything else all day. (Little known fact - now that I have had lymph nodes taken from my right arm I will have to have all shots, bloodwork, and even blood pressure taken from my left arm). Then they flushed my port and sent us on our way. You know - nothing says chemo treatment like Long John Silvers! Yep greasy fried fish and shrimp ended my perfect first chemo day.
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I woke up this morning - day 3 - and felt much better. I got worse as the day went on though - just sore, tired, hard to concentrate, a lot like yesterday. But once again I worked all day and was able to take the dog for a walk. Nothing I can't handle yet.
4 comments:
do you ever wash your sunflower socks? just wondering. So now you have a Theresa wig too? You should google and find out what a Linda wig looks like. Keep the smiles, you look gorgeous. The guy next to you was probably hacking because he was nervous sitting by a beautiful blonde bombshell!
The Linda wigs are BAD - so I get to use an alter ago (or three) for the next couple of months! I don't think I've done my own laundry since this whole thing started. I'm sure the lucky sunflower socks have been washed though!
About twenty years ago a friend and I picked up a truckload of yew logs for fence posts from the big Hauser Corp. stockpile south of town. They had an exclusive contract from the Feds to collect Pacific yew from the forests of the Pacific Northwest and extract taxol from the bark. At the time taxol was being tested against ovarian cancer. I hadn't the slightest idea then how personally significant that drug would one day become.
Docetaxel/taxotere (why do all these drugs have two names?) isn't identical to taxol, but it's close. It's derived from the needles of the European yew. It was developed as an alternative as there just aren't enough Pacific yew trees to fulfill the need. Both drugs have a small problem—they don't dissolve in water. In the case of taxotere polysorbate 80 is used to overcome this.
Now with your little 120 to 140 mg dose of taxotere (depends on your body surface area: http://www.halls.md/body-surface-area/bsa.htm) you get about 25 times as much polysorbate, probably more than three grams. Yowzaa! “Are we having fun yet?”
One of the side effects of all that polysorbate 80 is edema—the swelling. The dexamethasone pills are supposed to control that as in some people the edema can be so bad as to be life threatening. Sounds like you don't tolerate it very well. Hang in there: only three more times to go! Seems that she handles it much better than you do. Didn't hear any complaints of swelling. Guess everyone is a little bit different.
They didn't do anything to control the neutropenia (low white blood cell count) in the first cycle until it became a problem around day eight. Then she had four days of neutrogen (I think) which caused considerable discomfort: muscle/joint/bone aches. She got a shot (neulasta?) second day of the second cycle to prevent a repeat.
Hair's still going two weeks after it started to go. I take it that this is rather unusual. What I've read is that it generally only takes about a week: your mileage may vary. She's been using scarves quite successfully. Found instructions on the net for various ways of tying them. The one she had on last night was quite nice: blue with a white patterned border. If you didn't already know she was on chemo you probably wouldn't think anything of it.
First week of second cycle was rougher than first week of first. Hate to say this but general consensus is that each succeeding cycle gets worse. Thanksgiving is going to be extra special this year.
Hi Wayne -
Thanks for the info. Trying to ignore the chemo thing today but it is very interesting. I never did end up swelling very badly just had lots of pain over the weekend. But still have a full head of hair a week later. I'll be getting it cut this weekend though.
Thanks again.
Lin
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