Chemotheraphy

I thought I would provide a complete breakdown of my day yesterday, for those of you curious about the procedure.

I showed up at 10:00 AM and had bloodwork done. This is to ascertain my blood levels and make sure they are within acceptable levels for receiving the chemo. Since it was my first time, my counts were perfect. :)

An hour before my chemo appointment, I'm supposed to take my Emend... which meant I was supposed to take it at 10:00, but didn't remember until 10:30. But that was okay, because she had other things she needed to do first, so it still ended up being an hour before I received chemo.

I was in a private room. This is because it was the first time and she had a lot of questions for me. During subsequent visits, I may or may not get a private room, depending on availability. The other option is giant room (they call the "big room") that holds a whole bunch of people.

You can bring food or drinks in with you... which is pretty cool. They also have coffee, tea, soda and water available in a tiny kitchenette. And, sometimes there are snacks available too. I think I might start bringing in snacks too to share with the other patients.

After getting me settled in my room, she put an IV with a saline drip into my arm. The needle was really small and didn't hurt at all. They will be alternating sides of my body that they insert this in each time I go so as to give my veins a little more time to recover each time.

The first thing she did was to run a couple of different types of anti-nausea medicine through the IV. That took about half an hour. Then she started the chemotheraphy.

The first thing she gave me was called Adriamycin. Although this was given through my IV, she manually fed it in, rather than just attaching it to a drip. She would push through a couple of cc's at a time, then pull back and let the saline carry it through. This was followed by Cytoxan, which was attached to the IV as a drip. It combined with the saline to carry it into my system. Whereas it took about 20-30 minutes to feed through the Adriamycin, the Cytoxan took about an hour.

Jeanne (my super awesome nurse) set me up with a regimen for taking my anti-nausea medication for the next few days. After that, it goes onto an "as needed" basis. That starts tomorrow.

Ever since receiving my chemo, I have felt physically fine, but really tired. I feel like I could sleep all the time. I don't know how much to attribute to the chemo treatment itself (red blood cell counts, etc.) and how much to attribute to the anti-nausea medication that makes me drowsy. I guess I'll start finding out tomorrow.

Today, I went back for my Nuelasta shot, which is supposed to raise my white blood cell count, to better fight against infection. So, at least I know that my chance of infectio nis really low. Unfortunately, being this tired, also makes my ability to concentrate really low, so I'm going to go now and I'll catch you up on more details later.